Apps that patients and care teams install on iPhone and Android: patient engagement, appointments and reminders, care team messaging, and coaching companions. Each one is planned around Apple's and Google's health data rules, says nothing sensitive on a lock screen, and keeps working without a signal where it safely can. We do not build diagnostic or medical device software.
Custom healthcare app development is designing and building an iPhone and Android app around one practice's or health company's own service, then keeping it live in both stores. We take on four kinds, all of them apps a person installs: patient engagement apps, appointment and reminder apps, care team messaging apps, and coaching or wellness companions. Apps built around the video visit itself sit with our telehealth app developers.
Installed by a clinic's patients or a health company's customers: sign-in, intake forms, care instructions, documents and a history of visits. When a provider runs the app it usually holds protected health information, so hosting and every vendor agreement are settled before the first screen is designed.
Booking across providers and locations, confirmations, reschedule links and reminders. A reminder scheduled on the phone itself fires on time with no signal. In Google Play's health apps declaration, scheduling and reminders sit under the Healthcare Services and Management category.
For clinicians, coordinators and coaches: who is on today, which patient or member is waiting for a reply, and one thread per person. The notification says that a message arrived and never what it says, because the lock screen is the most public part of a phone.
Programs, daily check-ins, habit streaks and subscriptions for members of a wellness, fitness or coaching service. Many read steps, sleep or workouts from HealthKit or Health Connect, with permission. Our fitness app development page covers training apps in more depth.
| App | Who decides what it may hold | Phone features it relies on | Store rule it meets first |
|---|---|---|---|
| Patient engagement | The provider, under HIPAA when it applies, with an agreement from every vendor that holds the data | Secure storage, sign-in, notifications | Apple 5.1.1: privacy policy, consent and account deletion inside the app |
| Appointments and reminders | The provider's own booking and cancellation policy | Local notifications, calendar | Apple 4.5.4: no sensitive detail in a push notification |
| Care team messaging | The employer, and HIPAA for any patient detail in a thread | Notifications, secure storage | Lock screen visibility on both platforms |
| Coaching and wellness | Often the FTC Act rather than HIPAA, when no provider or health plan runs it | HealthKit, Health Connect, subscriptions | Apple 5.1.3 and Google's Health Connect requirements |
No patient or care team app of ours is published as a case study yet. What follows is the nearest work, each piece labelled for what it is and what it is not.
AirTrainr runs a sports training marketplace across the USA and Canada, and its athlete app and trainer app are ours, written in React Native with Expo and backed by Supabase. Athletes look for a trainer, book a session or reply to an offer. Trainers run their calendar, make offers and watch their earnings and reviews. Both apps have chat and notifications.
Not a health app. Booking, messaging and notifications are, though, the parts a reminder or care team app is made of.
We built all of Planivo, the platform and its website, to plan the workforce of clinics and hospitals. Rosters are drawn up month by month, leave passes three approval levels and is flagged when two people of one speciality would be away together, and staff get tasks, training with attendance and a warning before a certification lapses. Hall screens show who is on duty, a history keeps every change, and six roles each see their own part.
A tool for clinic staff rather than an app patients install, shown for the healthcare workflow behind it.
We built the chat on this page and the AI copilot behind it in house. An assistant replies first, and anyone on our team can step into the thread and carry on as a person.
The same hand-off, from an automatic first reply to a named person, is what a care team inbox needs.
Both stores hold health apps to extra rules, and both publish them. The table sets them side by side, read on 17 October 2026 from Apple's App Review Guidelines, last updated 16 October 2026, and Google Play's Health Content and Services policy. Guideline numbers are Apple's.
| Topic | Apple App Store | Google Play and Android |
|---|---|---|
| Using health data | Never for advertising, marketing or data mining, nor passed to third parties for those ends; research use only with permission (5.1.3) | Health Connect data is personal and sensitive user data under the User Data policy, with further requirements on top |
| Saying what you collect | Disclose the specific health data taken from the device (5.1.3), with a privacy policy linked in App Store Connect and inside the app (5.1.1) | A privacy policy linked in Play Console and inside the app, on a public page that is not a PDF |
| Declaring it | Purpose strings that explain each permission the app asks for (5.1.1) | Every published app completes the Health apps declaration, testing tracks included |
| Medical claims | Medical apps get closer review; accuracy claims need data and method, and the app should tell people to check with a doctor (1.4.1) | A regulated device shows proof of clearance on request; any other health app's description says it is not a medical device and does not diagnose, treat, cure or prevent a condition |
| Who publishes | Healthcare apps should come from the legal entity that provides the service, not an individual developer (5.1.1) | Developers of health apps, such as medical apps, register their Play Console account as an organization |
| Notifications | Push must not be needed for the app to work and should not carry sensitive personal information (4.5.4) | An app can hide a notification's content on the lock screen and show a public version instead; the user can always hide more |
HealthKit on iPhone and Health Connect on Android keep health data a person has gathered from other apps and devices: steps, sleep, workouts, heart rate and more. An app reads or writes it only with permission, one data type at a time. The two differ in ways that change the design.
Four answers belong in the scope before design: the exact data types, read or write for each, the moment each permission is asked for, and what the screen shows when the answer is no. Google's guide warns that a person can revoke permission at any time, so on both platforms the app checks before every use.
None of our published case studies uses HealthKit or Health Connect yet. If your app needs either, that work goes on the discovery sprint's risk register before any fixed price, rather than being found mid build.
Phones get lost, shared, backed up and left face up on a desk. OWASP's mobile security standard sums up the storage side in two requirements, MASVS-STORAGE: store sensitive data securely, and stop it leaking. Six rules turn that into things you can check. Ask any vendor, us included, to show each one working in a demo.
The server side follows the same rules as our other healthcare builds. Before our team touches any protected health information of yours, Digital Heroes signs a business associate agreement with you. The backend is hosted on AWS, Microsoft Azure or Google Cloud with that cloud's BAA in place, and an outside, independent firm has reviewed how we handle HIPAA.
A wellness app that no provider or health plan runs may sit outside HIPAA, but not outside the law. The FTC's Mobile Health Apps Interactive Tool says the HIPAA Rules do not reach health information held by anyone who is not a covered entity or business associate, and that the FTC Act applies to most app developers, health apps included. The same tool covers the FTC's Health Breach Notification Rule.
Most health apps need the same screens on iPhone and Android, which is the job a cross-platform framework does. React Native is our default for apps on both platforms, a standard our CTO sets, and Flutter is on our stack too. Native code still wins in a few cases.
| Question | React Native | Flutter | Native Swift and Kotlin |
|---|---|---|---|
| Codebases for two stores | One | One | Two, one per platform |
| Language your next hire needs | JavaScript or TypeScript | Dart | Swift and Kotlin |
| Reaching HealthKit and Health Connect | Through a native module, from a library or written for the app | Through a plugin or platform channels | Directly |
| An Apple Watch app | Not on its platform list, so a separate native build | Not on its supported platforms, so a separate native build | Built with the phone app |
| Cost against one native app, in our calculator | 1.1x to 1.3x | 1.1x to 1.3x | 1.7x to 1.9x for both |
Health apps get opened in waiting rooms, basements and rural clinics. Android's offline-first guide describes an app that does its core job, or the part that matters most, with no connection, and it offers three ways to save a change: online only, queued for later, or saved on the phone first and synced after. A health app uses all three, chosen screen by screen.
| Feature | With no signal | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Today's appointments and care plan | Shown from the encrypted copy, with the time it was last updated | People need it most where reception is worst |
| Check-ins, symptom notes, habit logs | Saved on the phone first, sent when the connection returns | Losing what someone typed is worse than sending it late |
| Booking, cancelling, paying | Online only, with a plain message saying so | A slot or a payment has to be confirmed by the server at that moment |
| Reminders | Fire on time | A local notification is delivered by the phone's own system, not a server |
| Messages to the care team | Held in an outbox and marked not sent | The person must see that nobody has read it yet |
When one record changes in two places, the same guide names last write wins as the usual answer on mobile. That suits a habit log. It should never decide anything a clinician edited: there the care team's version stands, and the person's change waits for someone to review it.
A health app runs the same way as any fixed-bid build with us, with two extra steps at the end for the stores. Our custom software development company page shows the first 30 days in more detail.
With us, a focused first version of custom software runs $40,000 to $150,000, and complex enterprise platforms $250,000 to $500,000 or more. For a phone app, our mobile app cost calculator works line by line, and these are the lines a health app touches.
| Line | Figure | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Focused MVP app | $40,000 to $80,000, over three to five months | Our pricing guide, used by the calculator |
| Mid-complexity business app | $90,000 to $180,000, over five to eight months | Our pricing guide |
| Storing protected health information | Plus $30,000 to $100,000 | The calculator's HIPAA line |
| Both stores from one codebase | 1.1x to 1.3x the one-platform figure | The calculator |
| Upkeep after launch | 15 to 20 percent of the build a year | Our pricing guide |
| Apple Developer Program | 99 USD a membership year | Apple |
| Google Play registration | US$25, paid once |
Four things push both numbers up: more user roles, HealthKit or Health Connect, offline sync, and a watch app. Name them before you ask anyone for a price. Store review adds a short wait at the end: Apple's App Review typically reviews at least half of all submissions in under 24 hours and 90 percent in under 48, and a rejection adds a fix and a second review.
The calculator turns your own choices into a planning range. A scoped quote after a first call turns the range into one number.
This page is signed by Divyansh Singh, our Chief Technology Officer, who owns the architecture and engineering standard behind our builds and made React Native the team's default for apps that run on both iOS and Android. Our engineers sit in Delhi and Lucknow, with a few mobile engineers in Sydney, while leadership and in-person kickoffs are in New York.
You own what is built. The code, the repositories and the cloud accounts are registered to you and billed to you, and our engineers are collaborators you can remove. Keep the store listings in your own developer accounts too. Need people rather than a project? See hiring mobile app developers.
On Clutch, Digital Heroes is rated 5.0 from 66 verified reviews (checked 13 October 2026).
Our mobile app cost calculator starts a focused MVP at $40,000 to $80,000, then adds $30,000 to $100,000 when the app stores protected health information and a factor of 1.1x to 1.3x for iPhone and Android from one codebase. The biggest movers after that are user roles, HealthKit or Health Connect, offline sync and a watch app. The cost section lists every line and its source.
Pick one job for one kind of user, such as booking a visit or logging a daily check-in. Settle whether the app will hold protected health information, because that decides hosting and agreements. List the health data permissions, the store rules and how each screen behaves offline, and only then design. Build in short sprints, test on real phones, and submit with a demo login full of invented records.
By the hour, the pricing guide behind our calculator puts app developers at $35 to $60 for junior work, $60 to $100 for mid-level, $100 to $160 for senior and $150 to $220 for a technical lead. A health app takes more of those hours than a simple one, which is what the calculator's HIPAA line prices. A fixed price for a scoped first version replaces the hourly sum, and that is how our discovery sprint ends.
There is no neutral ranking: many published lists are written by a vendor that ranks itself, as our own lists on other topics do, with a disclosure. Judge firms on apps you can install: ask each for two health apps it shipped, how it met Apple's guideline 5.1.3, how it asks for Health Connect permissions, and what its notifications show on a locked phone. Our nearest published work is AirTrainr and Planivo.
Only when HIPAA covers whoever runs it: health plans, clearinghouses, providers that handle claims and similar transactions electronically, and their business associates. A coaching app sold straight to consumers is often outside it, though the FTC Act and the Health Breach Notification Rule can still apply. Settle it before design, because it changes hosting, agreements and cost. Your counsel makes that call, not your developer.
Three things a shopping app rarely meets. The stores add rules for health data and medical claims. The phone's own health stores hand out data one permission at a time, and may refuse without saying so. And data on the device needs more care: secure storage, quiet notifications, nothing in backups or logs. Add HIPAA or the FTC rules on the server side, and the scope runs longer than the feature list suggests.
Our pricing guide puts a focused MVP app at three to five months and a mid-complexity app at five to eight. Discovery comes first and ends with a fixed price; build sprints then run one to two weeks, each closed by a recorded demo. Store review is the last wait, and Apple says it usually finishes within two days; a health rule that needs fixing adds a second round.
Not through us. Our apps neither read from nor write into an EHR such as Epic, and FHIR or HL7 interfaces are integration work we refer to a specialist. What an app can do is gather bookings, intake answers and check-ins and put them in front of your staff in a dashboard or an export, so a person decides what reaches the chart.
You do. Every repository and cloud account is opened in your name, on your billing, and you can remove our engineers' access whenever you choose. Publish from your organization's own developer accounts as well: Apple expects a healthcare app to come from the business that provides the service, and Google requires an organization account for health apps such as medical apps.
The platforms keep moving after you ship: Google, for one, supports the Fit APIs only until the end of 2026. Our pricing guide budgets 15 to 20 percent of the build a year for upkeep. After launch we keep working in the same sprints, or hand over with documentation and runbooks so your own team takes it on.
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Bring the one job your app has to do and the people who will use it. When the work fits, the written scope and quote come within 48 hours. You book the call yourself, at least five days ahead.
115 people across five studios in New York, Delhi, London, Sydney and Lucknow, shipping ecommerce, web, software and mobile work for founder-led brands. Senior engineers only, no account-manager relay, and the same team from kickoff to launch.
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