mHealth App Development Process: Understanding the Cost of Modernization

The mHealth app development is one of the most promising and fast-growing markets and it’s no wonder why so many healthcare providers turn to developing custom mobile apps. In 2025, the global mHealth app development market is expected to reach 0 billion which is five times more than in 2016 ($21 billion). Both mature healthcare service providers and small startups are posed with the same question: How to modernize or build a solution from scratch within a reasonable budget? Continue reading and learn how much you need to budget to either re-engineer an enterprise solution or hire a custom mHealth app development company.

How much does it cost to re-engineer a mHealth app or to develop a new one?

The overall cost of mHealth application development or partial modernization of existing solutions depends on the scope of work you have planned. For obvious reasons, it’s considerably less expensive to launch an MVP mHealth app development than to build a full-scale mHealth app or do a partial renovation of your mHealth app.

How to count the renovation mHealth app development budget?

To better understand the approximate budget spent on modernization, you should first estimate the “as-is” state of your solution and then continue with setting up clear and actionable goals.

Why bother with all the analysis? Simply because knowing the scope of work simplifies the budgeting process. We asked our mobile back-end development and architect specialists to provide approximate estimates for mHealth app development renovations and they go as follows:

1. Basic user interface design update

Assuming that your mHealth solution is up-to-date architecture-wise and the code readability score is high, you may be thinking about a regular improvement or redesign of your app’s UI.

For example, if you need to change brand colors, adjust shades, sprinkle a couple of buttons, and change the text in a 30-40 screen application, it may take you around 30-45 days to design, program, test, and put it in production. Same time-frames apply to UI redesign caused by a rollout of a new version of the operating system.

Mind, however, that this estimate does not include intervention in code and the addition of new functions.

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2. Code and third-party components assessment

There are many legacy mHealth app development solutions that haven’t been refactored in a while and need a thorough code analysis. Code check is a standard procedure directed at determining code readability and, in effect, concluding with an “as-is” statement of product viability.

Imagine you have an app written in Objective-C. It’s costly, slow, glitchy, and requires a specialist who still uses that programming language and you have no other solutions. This is where you need a team of mHealth app developers who can analyze your app part by part, create a renovation plan, and re-engineer each module by refactoring the old parts of the code.

At Binariks, we apply best practices of code review process that goes as follows:

• Step 1: Static code review done with the help of automated code assessment tools that estimate code semantics and complexity level that impact readability and performance. It’s a short procedure that can last 1-4 hours and is finalized with a prioritized list of suggestions for improvement.
• Step 2: Manual code review is usually done by mHealth app developers to check whether the code is written according to the best practice of a specific programming language.
• Step 3: CI/CD process analysis targets specific processes such as code review and code submit history. Additionally, we check whether a company is still using the most suitable technology or tool for every function and feature. Numerous legacy applications can depend on obsolete third-party integrations and, when left unrefactored, lose essential functions. The speed of completing this part of code review is determined by the amount of accessed information.
• Step 4: Delivering assessment report with recommendations regarding improvements of code and solution in general.

3. Simple code refactoring

This type of renovation may suit mHealth app development solutions that require optimization of the existing code base, implementation of new architecture, deleting or updating of the third-party libraries.

The tech team of mHealth app developers conducts an in-depth analysis, divides the product into sub-units, prioritizes the most critical parts of the solution, and creates a refactoring plan. Traditionally, after refactoring a solution or some of its parts, the application’s UI needs a redesign.

4. Full-scale mHealth app development

Counting the approximate cost of mobile health applications is quite complicated due to the variety of functions and complexity of their implementation. For instance, a web application for doctors with a mobile app for patients may cost around $240,000 while developing an iOS-only meditation application can be worth around $170,000.

So, if we could provide rough estimates of mHealth app development cost, it would fall into a range of $120,000, $170,000, $240,000, and more depending on the complexity of the solution, list of functions, specifics of the programming toolset, and many other aspects.

What is the total cost of an MVP mHealth app development process?

According to different sources, the approximate cost of the MVP mHealth app ranges from $40,000 to $75,000. Please mind that the cost of an MVP mobile health app development process depends on the complexity and number of features you want to see in your solution.

To give you more ideas, a doctor appointment app with a chat which is considered to be a quite simple solution will require less investment than an MVP with scheduling and videoconferencing integration.

What’s inside the mHealth app development cost?

The cost structure of the mHealth app development process depends on the collaboration model of your tech partner. For instance, there are companies that can build dedicated teams of mHealth app developers who work directly for a client without middlemen.

Traditionally, these tech outsourcing providers use the mHealth app development cost structure built from hourly rates of designers, UI/UX designers, business analysts, architects , quality assurance experts, and mHealth app developers.

The general mHealth app development cost may go up and down depending on the scope of work and involvement of individual tech experts. Here is how the team composition may change according to the scope of work and phase of development:

1. Discovery phase is the primary stage that goes before actual development. The main purpose of discovery is to clarify the scope of mHealth app development and crystalize the goals. So it’s important to finalize the software requirements specification, approve high-level architecture design, and use cases, map out the high-level product roadmap and finalize the work breakdown structure. To cover all these aspects, you will need a cross-functional team comprised of a business analyst, a solution architect, and a UI/UX designer.

2. Implementation phase predicts engagement of front-end, back-end, and mobile mHealth app developers, a project manager, a quality assurance specialist, and DevOps engineer, with parallel support from a business analyst, solution architect, and UI/UX designer on the go.

3. The team setup during the post-production phase depends on the complexity of the solution and the owner’s preferences. In a nutshell, during the post-production stage, the solution can be maintained and monitored by a DevOps engineer and a couple of programmers.

You may end up with additional costs on a monthly basis starting aude/videoconferencing, chat, and finishing with Cloud provider services like authentication, etc.

What aspects increase the cost of mHealth app development?

Hourly rates of mHealth app developers comprise a dominant share of the overall cost but you should also consider additional expenses that add up along the way. For instance, many if not all third-party integrations require monthly or annual subscription plans.

There are, however, more to aspects that can potentially increase your mHealth app development budgets like working with a tech partner that doesn’t use an up-to-date tech stack or doesn’t adhere to international standards such as HIPAA.

Integrations with third-party service providers within

Integration with third-party services at the beginning of product creation significantly increases monthly maintenance costs. As the result, your budget may change when a third-party service provider decides to increase the price or, what’s worse, delete or substitute some of the features that are critical to your business.

In general, simple and fast as it may seem, integration with third-party limits your ability to customize. So if you want to minimize dependence on third-party provider performance and cost, we recommend you to address custom mHealth app development services when possible.

mHealth app development companies with the outdated tech stack

If you are planning to delegate mHealth app development to a tech partner, pay special attention to the tech stack they want to use. Why is it important to have your app written with most up-to-date technologies? Because it will be way easier for your to support it on your side and you will save yourself some time before refactoring or modernizing your solution. As of now, Kotlin, Swift, React Native and Flutter are the trending and most widely-used mobile app development technologies.

Also, make sure that the company offers code quality assurance in their software development life cycle. If company ignores quality assurance practices as such, you may receive a glitchy and non-production-ready mHealth app.

Interoperability requirements and HIPAA

The HIPAA compliance (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) requirements are now mandatory for all businesses in the healthtech industry. Since interoperability is tightly connected with exchange of personal data, mHealth apps have to follow secure data exchange protocols while sharing it with third-party administrators. This means that you will need to find an mHealth app development company that applies such standards as FHIR.

Having a HIPPA-compliant app means that you can integrate it with hardware or EMR/EHR interfaces to move data. You can, of course build your application disregarding HIPAA but, highly likely, you will end up with limited business opportunities.

And it’s not only about your development partner that should be HIPAA-compliant but also the third-party services your platform will be integrated with. For example, not all of the video or audioconferencing platforms use HIPAA-approved protocols for data exchange. Yet, some of them do. These are platforms like TrueConf, Doxy.me, Thera-LINK, TheraNest, SimplePractice, and other videoconferencing solutions.

Same requirements apply to cloud providers you want to use. Using AWS, GCP , Azure cloud provider services can speed up the mHealth app development time. Another bonus of using the authorized cloud providers is that they have the most up-to-date information regarding the latest updates in HIPAA and recommendations you amy use to be on top of the situation.

How to optimize the cost of mHealth app development?

The most cost-efficient approach to optimizing the overall price as well as improving the quality of the final product is to delegate innovation or full-scale mobile health app development to an experienced mHealth app development company .

Choosing the right partner that knows and follows the best practice of mHealth app development will generate a lot of added value in the long perspective. For instance, you will have a clear vision regarding the scope of work and, consequently, will be able to prioritize and budget accordingly.

How do you find a reliable mHealth app development partner? Here are a few things you can add to your check-list:

1. Security training. Check if the company adheres to the security standards and has attained internationally-acknowledged certifications such as ISO 9001:2015, ISO/IEC 27001:2013, AWS, GCP, or Microsoft partner certificates. These certifications require regular security training for each company member and increase the data security of your product in particular and all business data in general.
2. Background check. Ask managers whether the company can conduct such simple security precautions as a background check of tech specialists who can potentially work on your project. This procedure is prescribed by the international security certifications mentioned above.
3. Compliance. Make sure that the tech partner has a track record in mobile health app development and knows how to create FDA, GDPR, HIPAA, Hitech, and HL7-compliant solutions.
4. Location. Check if you can visit the mHealth app development company, participate in the interview process, and scale the team up and down in a reasonable time. Also, companies charge different hourly rates depending on the location and maturity of the tech talent market which means that some directions can offer lower rates while the others have a larger share of senior programmers.

Final thoughts

The modernization of mHealth apps is a necessary and imminent future that awaits those healthcare leaders who want to keep in touch with their clients. Considering the rising competition in the mobile health app development market, we see even more sense in foreseeing, scheduling, and budgeting the refactoring process and gradual renovation of solutions.

Having access to a variety of mHealth app development companies simplifies the re-engineering process and gives structure to those healthcare providers who choose not to manage mHealth developers teams in-house. Binariks is a trusted tech partner with a proven record of modernization and from-scratch mHealth app development. We will help you meet rising market challenges through innovation. Share your needs and our sales representatives will respond on short notice.