Critical Challenges In Fitness & Healthcare App Development

Fitness & Healthcare App Development: Introduction

Fitness, along with healthcare app development, has emerged as one of the most dynamic industries, with people exploring various avenues to maintain their physical and mental health. Taking care of your healthcare is necessary for you to stay on top of your game and live a productive lifestyle. This has resulted in three sixty degrees of change in habits and the kind of daily items people interact with.

From diets to workouts, the way our generation prefers products has changed completely. There are currently over 784,626 healthcare companies in the US right now. This shows the emerging trend in fitness and the focus companies are investing in this domain. Healthcare app development has made lives infinitely more manageable, owing to how accessible they are and how they offer expensive and tedious services just a click away and give you various options to choose from to maintain your physical and mental health.

Digitalization and revolutionizing the fitness and healthcare industry are therefore inevitable, as people support software and automate manual tasks, which can be risky.

Healthcare and fitness apps come in various categories: lifestyle, workout-based, diet, nutrition, or disease management.

Further Read: Planning to Make A Fitness App? Include These Features To Make It Like Fitbit

Fitness & Healthcare App Development: Creating an all-new revolution

The demand created for fitness apps is a newfound trend, not present probably a decade back when people still used to focus on physical means instead of digital to provide their bodies with the activity they needed. It is evident how healthcare and fitness apps have started a revolution that wasn’t there a few years ago, backed up statistically, too, as shown below:

1. By 2030, the global fitness app market will reach $120.37 billion, up from $13.78 billion in 2020.

The glaring numbers depicted by the fitness app market share in the industry show the heavy amount of interest businesses and companies are putting into developing good fitness apps. A growth of almost 25% in barely nine years indicates excellent progress and a sign that the focus people are putting into their health will only increase with time. The trend for using fitness apps will elevate over the years, owing to the lack of time people have to maintain their work-life balance and the fitness app’s multi-functionality. Fitness apps have significantly changed healthcare and provided a new aspect of how clients can provide and use different services.

2. According to estimates, 643 million people worldwide will likely be diabetic by 2030.

Diabetes is one of the leading causes of death at young ages and is extremely widespread. Almost 12% of the US population has diabetes, a big red flag for their health. The high mortality rate of this disease is also due to poor detection and periodic checks on blood sugar levels. Fitness apps do play a significant role when it comes to diabetes patients, as almost all of them keep a check on the user’s pulse rate and heartbeat and guide you on how much carbohydrates you need to have per day to keep your glucose at an optimum level, preventing any sudden heart attacks or blood circulation or problems.

3. The total number of Fitbit users registered in 2021 was over 111 million.

Fitbit is a popular name in the healthcare industry for fitness, with products and an app to monitor all your health parameters and socially connect with your peers to stay motivated and track your progress. It has gathered millions of users within ten years of its launch, which shows the receptiveness of the user base for adopting fitness apps and preferring this means for tracking step counts, heart rate, water intake, etc. It also includes syncing the app to the physical device, which helps prepare a 24*7 report.

Fitness & Healthcare Apps Development: Critical Challenges

Before stepping into this domain, there are a few challenges that the company should be aware of so that they can be rectified at an earlier stage:

1. Creating A Whole Ecosystem

By simply creating software, fitness apps do not maximize efficiency since users cannot access them throughout the day. It needs to be integrated with other devices, such as smartwatches, phones, and other fitness apps, which check different parameters. This helps provide the user with a holistic view of their health, not just one particular aspect. Creating a whole ecosystem to ensure the best user experience can be pretty cumbersome in terms of resources and put the added pressure of providing that each product is top-notch to attain a trusted customer base.

2. Privacy Of User’s Data

Apps that monitor user health take a lot of input from the user’s data. Unfortunately, cyber-attacks are at an all-time high, and fitness apps do prove to be a weak link. Almost 1 in 3 attacks are successful, which calls for a great developer team to provide increased security to the application and ensure that the data transmission is smooth, safe, and secure.

3. Compliance With Medical Rules & Regulations

Medical data is highly confidential, and government organizations and medical associations set strict laws to protect it. It differs across regions and departments, and every fitness app has to follow these if they want to be put up in the app market. These standards need to be adhered to keep the user’s data strictly confidential. For example, in the USA, you must comply with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). This US federal law regulates the protection of personal health data.

4. Constant Innovation

Healthcare trends change every few years. Be it in terms of diseases, the number of app technologies available, workout trends, or medical laws, this industry is highly dynamic. Thus, making a rigid app is not the right solution to survive in the market. Instead, each fitness app needs to be constantly innovated as per the current trends and the functionalities the application offers to prevent it from becoming outdated.

5. Integrating Various Features

Fitness apps use different APIs and third-party plugins across multiple platforms and technologies to maximize the user experience and provide a sustainable design. Integrating multiple APIs is needed to facilitate data transfer and create a comprehensive health environment, which is not an easy task and increases the app’s complexity.

Overcoming These Challenges: Is It Possible?

It is certainly possible to overcome the above challenges, but it can be an iterative and lengthy process.

Data encryption should protect the user’s data, so it’s not visible to any third party. This would help send confidential data such as prescription and medical test reports across easier and make the application more reliable.

Multi-factor authentication can enhance security by providing foolproof authentication using retinal scanners and fingerprints. Ensure that the application goes through multiple rounds of testing and that all the medical laws are kept in mind. HIPAA violations can be pretty heavy, up to $50,000 per violation. This also helps to check the performance of the app, data security, and the user experience it offers.

Fitness and healthcare app development must be highly accessible and have an easy-to-use interface. Therefore, design the application in such a way that it’s simplistic, uses a lot of graphs to depict the user’s daily habits, and has a straightforward design with bold fonts to attract the user.

Markovate: Helping You Convert These Challenges Into Opportunities

Fitness app development incorporates technologies such as IoT, blockchain, and ML, along with unique modules and features such as chatbots and barometers, which can be daunting with various factors to look after.

Healthcare application development is an in-demand field due to its growing scope for customization and the noble cause it promotes. One can face many challenges as a great fitness app demands the perfect mix of innovative technologies, a strategic design, and a sense of reliability regarding privacy and laws.

Markovate helps you solve the above-given challenges and adds more substance to your application through cloud computing, AI/ML, and sync options. Our developers are highly experienced in making fitness apps from scratch after analyzing your business’s needs as well as understanding the product they want to bring to life.

We follow an end-to-end app development process tailored for various platforms such as Ios and Android to expand your customer base.

Further Read: How To Build A Healthcare App That Brings Value To The End Users

Fitness & Healthcare App Development: FAQs

1. Are fitness apps changing the mobile industry?

Yes, fitness apps have changed the mobile industry due to their ease of use, functioning, and various workout options. Moreover, with increasing awareness, these fitness apps offer many unexplored opportunities that help companies plan and execute as per the latest trends and the need of the hour.

2. Is cost a huge challenge in healthcare and fitness application development?

Yes, the cost factor is a huge challenge as the needs of the fitness application continuously change, the application development varies significantly in terms of the services it provides, and hardware integration also comes into play. Moreover, the cost also depends on other factors, like whether the app would be on one platform or two or more.