Healthcare app development cost
Healthcare software costs more than equivalent software in any other vertical, and the reason is not the features. A patient-facing app that would cost $90,000 in retail costs $150,000 to $220,000 in healthcare once HIPAA controls, audit logging, consent management and an EHR interface are in scope. Compliance and integration are typically 30–40% of the build. This page prices that honestly by platform.
What healthcare requires
sensitivity 5/5- Compliance regimes
- 5
- Systems of record
- 8
- Distinct roles
- 6
- Named apps priced
- 8
The calculator returns
Popular apps in healthcare
8 recognisable products in this sector, each with a full cost breakdown: what it would take to build something of the same shape in the US today, itemised in engineering hours. Filter by type, complexity or platform.
8 apps
These are reference points, not clients or endorsements. Each page prices building a product of that shape from scratch — it does not describe what the named company spent, earns or runs on.
Why healthcare software costs what it does
The things that move the number in this vertical, which are usually not the features.
HIPAA is engineering, not paperwork
Audit logging, access controls, encryption key management, retention and deletion policy, and business associate agreements all have to be built and then maintained. Expect 15–25% of a healthcare build to be compliance engineering that produces no user-visible feature.
Integration with systems you do not control
Almost every healthcare product must exchange data with an EHR. A single HL7 v2 interface is $30,000–$70,000; an Epic or Oracle Health app-program integration is $60,000–$160,000 and gated by their review timeline, not yours.
Clinical safety review
Anything that influences a clinical decision attracts scrutiny. If the software diagnoses, recommends treatment or calculates dosing it may be a regulated medical device, which changes the project from a build into a programme.
Realities to plan around
- HIPAA applies to covered entities and their business associates. A direct-to-consumer wellness app is usually outside it — until you sell to a provider or a health plan, at which point you are in scope and retrofitting is expensive.
- Procurement runs 6–18 months in health systems, and security review is a gate you cannot skip. Budget for a security questionnaire, a penetration test report and often SOC 2 before your first contract.
- Patient-facing software must meet accessibility obligations in practice, not just in principle.
- De-identification is not anonymisation. Re-identification risk is a real design constraint on analytics.
What this sector expects
Compliance in play
Systems to integrate
Roles involved
Usually expected
Healthcare cost by platform
Where the software runs changes the build as much as who it serves. These pages price each pairing, including the constraints specific to it.
Price a healthcare build
This sector is already fixed, along with its roles, integrations and security posture. Answer the rest to see the number.
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Healthcare estimate
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Healthcare cost, answered
How much does it cost to build a healthcare app in the US?
It depends far more on scope than on the sector, and quoting a single figure here would be the least useful thing this page could do. What healthcare does decide is the floor: 5 compliance regimes may apply, you will be asked to integrate with roughly 8 systems of record, and 6 distinct roles typically touch the workflow — all of that before a single feature. The calculator below is already set to this sector; answer the rest and it returns a cost range, hours, timeline, team and running costs for your own scope.
Does my healthcare app need to be HIPAA compliant?
Only if you handle protected health information as a covered entity or on behalf of one. A fitness tracker you sell directly to consumers generally is not in scope. A patient portal for a clinic, an app a provider gives to patients, or anything where you sign a business associate agreement absolutely is. The distinction is about your relationship with the provider, not the type of data — and it should be settled before you design your data model, because retrofitting HIPAA controls costs several times what building with them costs.
What does EHR integration actually cost?
A single HL7 v2 interface through an integration engine is $30,000–$70,000. A FHIR R4 API layer is $45,000–$90,000. An Epic or Oracle Health app-program integration runs $60,000–$160,000 and is gated by their onboarding and review timeline rather than your engineering speed, so it belongs on the critical path from day one. Read-only access is dramatically cheaper than write-back, and starting read-only is usually the right call.
How accurate is this estimate?
It is a planning estimate, not a quote. The band shown is roughly plus or minus 15–20% for a well-defined scope, and wider while requirements are still moving. It is built from engineering hours per discipline, converted at our blended delivery rate, so the hours are directly comparable to a real proposal line by line — but a firm price needs a technical specification, which is the step after budgeting.
Does this include hosting and maintenance?
No, deliberately. The headline figure is one-off development cost. Monthly cloud infrastructure, metered vendor fees and annual maintenance are calculated separately and shown alongside it, because they are recurring operating costs rather than capital build cost. Adding them together produces a number that means nothing.
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Price your healthcare build
Every control on one page, a live spec sheet beside it, and nothing behind a form.