Tarun Nagar 
Among all the industries spread over the world, the healthcare industry is creating a memorable impact nowadays. The reason behind that is the development of technology and its perfect blend with healthcare. Read this blog to know more about how to develop a telehealth app like Practo.
Healthcare app development is developing at a fast rate and is delivering services that can save thousands of lives all over the world. Not only inventions and experiments but there are also plenty of other things going on in this industry.
With improvised machines and the latest medicines, the healthcare companies are making it big in the industry. It is unimaginably helping the patients.
Patients are now able to find the cure for their sufferings by sitting inside their homes. With the outburst of COVID-19, it has become impossible for people to go out, search for doctors, test labs, and pharmacies.
It is a highly risky thing for a patient to go out in public places. While more companies are now making their consultations and deliveries digital, Practo is one such company that thought of this a long time ago.
Not only delivery or consultation, but this application also proves to be ahead of its time by providing clean and manageable databases to patients as well as doctors.
Table of Contents
What is Practo?
Practo is a health-related mobile application that was founded in the year 2008. It provides several healthcare services online to bridge the gap between patients and doctors.
Along with services, it helps in maintaining patient records and consultations which are done by the app, and delivers quality content written by doctors on various topics.
Practo is an Indian startup company now operating in more than 20 countries all over the world. Started by two young entrepreneurs of NIT, Karnataka, India, this startup has become one of the most successful healthcare startups in the country in very little time due to its convenient services.
How Practo is Started?
This company started its journey with struggles. The co-founder of this company, Mr. Shashank ND suddenly notices the haphazard documents that are tough to manage and find out.
This happened when his father was going through knee surgery. At that time he realized the importance of having a good healthcare system in the country.
He discussed this idea with his friend, Abhinav Lal, which led to the birth of Practo in the year 2008. This they first launched a B2B healthcare platform.
Practo first started with software known as Practo Ray. This was a practice management software that helped doctors and clinics to maintain the records and medical history of their patients.
This was a great and manageable idea back in that time. Practo Ray got a lot of appreciation in the community of doctors, pharmacists, and clinic holders as it provided healthcare IT solutions in the easiest manner.
But as time passed, the company realized that it is important to connect the dots of each end of the Indian healthcare system to run a successful and seamless process of treatment.
With this idea, Practo decided to create a database repository of doctors which will be accessible to the public online. This led to the development of the Practo app as well as the website.
Following the ideology of the founder, this team of healthcare app developers dedicated itself to the users. Initially, only some doctors were available on the application who were a part of Practo Ray.
But after a few years of practice, the company is now able to establish itself with a huge database of doctors from different areas, medical conditions, prices, and more.
Practo has created its platform using Saas sales and also created a massive presence to get every medical practitioner registered for the same. One can find doctors according to their preferences by sitting in the comfort of your home.
Over time, Practo added consultations, lab tests, ordering of medicines, and more. Now, Practo claims to be a complete healthcare software designed to meet every need of its patients.
How Practo Works?
For the application to work, Practo has been divided into different stakeholders namely, patients, doctors, and hospitals/clinics. The working of the platform is explained below:
1. Patients
In the patient’s panel, there are various features offered so that people can take help from them. Some of them have been listed below.
- Health consultation: This feature is different from consulting a doctor. In the health consultation option, Practo asks for various questions regarding the issue the patient is facing. It does not require any kind of personal information. By studying the symptoms, the app suggests what doctors can consult. It is a form-like structure consisting of questions that can be answered by choosing the correct option, a rating scale, or even a yes or no.
- Consultation of doctor: One can consult with the doctor in terms of any medical emergency. Practo suggests a list of doctors available for online consultation as well as a list of reputed doctors in the area of the user. Practo works well as a telecalling application and the doctors will themselves contact in a confidential call and then give prescribed medicines for cure.
- Practo Search: Practo search is a very useful option for people who want to search for doctors around their residence or office area. It shows doctors when a medical condition is specified. For example, if you specify fever in your search, the results will show the list of doctors and clinics around your area who treat fever.
- Health articles: Regular health articles are being published by professionals as well as doctors in Practo. This covers a lot of topics and everyday struggles that the majority of people go through. These articles help the patients to identify the problem and act according to it.
- Ordering of medicines: Various medicines can be ordered through this app. Like food delivery applications work, Practo works in the healthcare industry to deliver medicines at your doorstep. Given that, Practo maintains full transparency and demands prescription for the order. This helps in identifying illegal buyers or people who try to do self-medication.
2. Doctors
Practo’s solutions for doctors enable them to manage the availability of patients, several consultations in a given day or week, and daily appointments making it the perfect doctor on-demand app development company.
With the help of mobile as well as web solutions, doctors are now able to manage users and increase their engagement. Practo also helps the doctors to share new offers as well as health lessons with the patients. For doctors, Practo provides three offerings, namely: Practo consult, Practo Health Feed, and Practo Profile.
Doctors can create their profiles and add their names to the healthcare database of Practo. This healthcare platform demands several important personal information such as experience, history, reviews, degree, and more. Doctors are also able to send signed prescriptions and reports with the help of the app easily on the patient’s phone.
3. Hospitals and Clinics
The two main Practo SaaS software are Practo Search and Practo Ray. With the help of Practo Ray, any clinic, as well as hospital, can handle various operations easily. The hospitals can install the software anytime and then the staff can use it to maintain records.
As far as Practo Search is concerned, it lets the patient check about any clinic and hospital. Hospitals that wish to get on top of search results are given the option of Practo Reach ads.
There are various premium plans available in order to maintain the position in the search results, maintaining the database, and other tasks.
Revenue Model of Practo
The revenue model of Practo has changed over the years. This healthcare, yet IT development company started around 2007-08 when the boom of startups was not present in the country.
The main focus of Practo was to make the user’s book appointments near their home or office, in other words, in their comfort zone by sitting at home.
The app helped in locating, booking, and payment services. The first revenue model was generated to take a certain percentage for booking these doctor appointments.
However, after the popularity of the app, the team has started working on several other services and thus, other models too. From the beginning aim of finding the right doctor or hospital, the numbers have gone up and Practo now claims to have more than 200000 doctors registered on their application.
It also expands its services to over 8000 hospitals all around the world. As far as the revenue point of view is concerned, this app has managed to raise more than $120 million all over the world in the last three rounds of funding.
In the fourth round of funding, this telehealth app development company has been able to expand its services on a broader level of healthcare. This includes diagnostic centers, labs, and even medicine delivery.
The revenue model is unchanged other than keeping up with recent trends, changes in prices, and the major outburst of COVID-19 worldwide. However, Practo still generates revenue by charging commission by a certain percentage.
The healthcare industry is one of the most highly paid industries and is worth over $100 billion. Practo is trying to touch every aspect of this healthcare business and generate revenue from it. It makes it easier for doctors and pharmacists to make money and helps patients to get things in comfort.
The revenue model of Practo mainly focuses on expansion in terms of the number of countries as well as types of services. During the year 2020, most patients tried consulting online when they were unable to go out due to the virus. This helped Practo to gain recognition and also gave an unexpected boost to its revenue.
Practo Services
- Online consultations: Online consultation with a doctor in the form of telecalling and getting prescribed medicines for the same.
- Video consultations: Practo offers video consultations with doctors so that the doctors can understand the situation very well and act according to the severity of the condition.
- Medicine delivery: Delivery of prescribed medicines at your home according to the prescription in a short duration of time.
- Lab test booking: With Practo, one can also book lab tests easily and get the reports on the application itself.
Cost of Developing An App Like Practo
The cost to develop a Practo clone may be on the costlier side. Some factors determine the overall cost of development while building such an app. Some of the vital concerns that affect the costing are:
1. Selection of Technology
The technology selected is a crucial part to develop an app like Practo. One must take care of the technology stack so that it does not create problems shortly.
2. App Design
The app design heavily contributes to the cost of application development. There are various elements such as the addition of UI/UX, pictures, icons, animations, graphics, and more that makes the application look more user-friendly and attractive. All of this gets added to the overall cost of development.
3. Development Cost
The cost of development includes all the resources used such as usage of cloud, number of developers, process to hire dedicated developers, the complexity of the application, and more.
4. Time Took
Since the application is complex, it can take months or more than a year to develop with all the facilities. More will be the time, more resources will be utilized and thus, the cost will go high.
5. Location of Development
The location of the development team plays a great role in adding to the cost of the application. It is important to hire a mobile app development company that suits the need of the app as well as its investment strategy. Developers residing in the US or other developed countries might demand more whereas Asian developers have fewer demands than that.
Conclusion
Practo is a complex yet very useful application. To develop an application such as Practo, the developers need to focus on what the end-users want. One must think ahead of time for the app to work for long years.
The Healthcare industry has so much to offer. The app developers need to keep monitoring the changes all around the world for better development.
