Jul, 11 2025
Building a telehealth app isn’t just another box to tick on a checklist—it’s more like picking a car for your family: flashy tech details, real comfort, price that doesn't give you a heart attack. It's wild, but the average price to get a proper telehealth platform off the ground in 2025 can rival the sticker price on your favorite SUV. Whether you’re a clinic hoping to expand or a tech startup looking to break in, one thing is clear: there’s no “one size fits all” when it comes to cost.
What Drives Telehealth App Costs?
Let’s get straight to the heart of it: people always ask, "How expensive is a telehealth app, really?" The quick answer—it depends, and the range is huge. For a basic MVP (minimum viable product) with some video calling, scheduling, and messaging, you’re looking at £55,000 on the low end. But if you want everything—integrations with EHR (like Epic or Cerner), AI-driven symptom checkers, a custom patient portal, payments, and the ability for hundreds of doctors to jump on at once—that can soar north of £380,000. And that's just for getting it live, not including what it takes to keep it running smoothly!
What cranks up the bill?
- Features and complexity. Every feature is like adding another room to a house—you want secure video chats, health record uploads, e-prescriptions, or AI triage bots? Each ramps up design, development, and QA (quality assurance) hours.
- Security and compliance. Data protection for health apps isn’t a bonus, it’s law. End-to-end encryption, GDPR, or HIPAA compliance isn’t cheap—some studies say just compliance features can add up to 20% to the cost if you want your app to work in the US and UK.
- Design and user experience. Bad design means lost users. Telehealth apps need to be “grandpa-friendly.” That means you need experienced UX/UI folks who know what makes healthcare work. Custom interfaces are more expensive than using templates, but save you loads in support calls and user drop-off.
- Integrations. Does your platform need to connect to local pharmacies? Send updates to wearable devices and digital thermometers? Every integration with an outside service eats up budget and, frankly, developer sanity.
- Testing and scaling. You can't put out a health app that crashes once there's a waiting room rush at 8:30 a.m. Scaling options (like AWS cloud services) ramp up testing costs fast. Table below shows what you might spend per feature bucket.
| Feature/Stage | Typical Cost (£) | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Basic MVP | 55,000 - 95,000 | Video, messaging, profile, bookings |
| Custom Design & UX | 18,000 - 36,000 | Accessibility for all ages |
| EMR Integration | 15,000 - 45,000 | Epic, Cerner, NHS Digital etc. |
| AI/Symptom Checker | 20,000 - 70,000 | Custom AI logic + training |
| Compliance & Security | 22,000 - 57,000 | GDPR, HIPAA, penetration testing |
| Advanced Video Conferencing | 8,000 - 23,000 | Multi-user, high quality, recording |
| Ongoing Support/Maintenance (Yearly) | 15,000 - 46,000 | Bug fixes, compliance, feature updates |
So, before you even hit a line of code, lining up these costs can make or break the project’s feasibility. One clinic director I spoke to last month spent six months just mapping out "must haves" vs. "nice-to-haves"—because the latter added about 40% to their quote that he really couldn't explain to the board.
What Impacts Price the Most? Get Real About Features
The real money question isn’t “What does a telehealth app cost?”—it’s “What do you really need it to do?” This is where costs spiral if you’re not careful. Here’s where I’ve seen teams trip up:
- High-definition video calls (telehealth app cost): Sure, anyone can do a Zoom call. But build a video chat that complies with health data rules, never drops during a consultation, and supports e-recording? You’ll need expert backend work plus licensing for video API services like Twilio or Agora.
- Appointment scheduling and reminders: Sounds simple, but now you’re syncing calendars, sending SMS, managing time zones, and adding admin dashboards for staff—hours add up fast.
- Patient records and file uploads: Patients need to upload X-rays or insurance papers, doctors need to securely update files. Data storage and permissions requirements increase exponentially as your user base grows.
- Custom patient and doctor dashboards: If you want to give doctors analytics (missed appointments, treatment success, billing) and allow patients to track long-term progress, this isn’t just a skin change—it’s a whole new engine under the hood.
- Payment integrations: Stripe, PayPal, or direct with insurance? Every payment method needs secure implementation, auditing, and—if you’re lucky—fraud checks.
It’s easy to get swept up in feature lists. If you’re building for a specific group (for example, chronic pain patients who need frequent remote monitoring), ditch fancy extras you’ll never use. Focus funds on what matters most to your user’s experience and clinical results. For example, Jasper—my son—used a pediatric virtual care app during Covid. They kept things dead simple with clear “call now” buttons and med tracking, but didn’t add video calls until local parents pushed for it the following year. Usage shot up 23% overnight after that, but the company avoided massive costs by launching lean and only building on success.
Hidden Charges: What Most People Don’t See Coming
The moment you think you’ve nailed your budget, curveballs start rolling. Here's what rarely makes it into the pitch deck, but definitely blows up your calculator:
- Regulatory approval fees: Whether you're dealing with the UK CQC, CE in Europe, or FDA in the US, these can buy you months of testing and thousands in third-party evaluation costs.
- User support costs: If you don't budget for a team (real people, not just FAQs), get ready to be flooded with angry calls when the app launches. Figure at least £25k/year for a minimum team of 2-3 people fielding support tickets and calls.
- Platform fees: Apple App Store and Google Play take their bite. If you want in-app purchases, factor up to 30% loss to platform fees unless you build web-first.
- Cloud and hosting fees: Apps with video calls or large medical image uploads will see bills spike as usage grows. Predictable? Not really—one mental health startup I know saw AWS costs triple from £800 to £3,000/month once their app hit TV ads.
- Insurance and liability: Want to sleep at night? Get liability and cyber insurance. Premiums for digital healthcare startups have risen about 15% since 2023, averaging £4,500/year by mid-2025.
- Localization: Planning to reach users in Spanish or Polish? Add translation and local compliance costs. The NHS Digital Accessibility Guidelines became stricter in March 2025, and adding screen-reader and translation support can add a few months to development easily.
It’s the non-obvious charges—the things that aren’t about shiny UI—that burn up budgets. The best founders I know always build “what if” buffers of 15-20% extra cash just for these hidden hurdles.
Choosing Who Builds Your App: Agencies, Freelancers, In-House? (Costs and Risks)
You’ve decided: you’re moving ahead with a telehealth app. But who’s going to build it, and what will that decision do to your costs—or your stress levels? Here’s what real founders wish they knew sooner:
- Freelancers: Super tempting for a lean MVP and will cost the least per hour (around £28-£65/hr in Eastern Europe, £52-£110 in the UK/EU for top profiles as of this summer). The drawback? You’ll spend ages project-managing, and if “Joe the Dev” vanishes mid-project, you might need a replacement fast, sometimes at double the price.
- Development Agencies: Prices for skilled agencies run £75,000–£400,000+ end-to-end, but you typically get project managers, legal coverage, and a full QA team. Hidden danger? Some offshore agencies hand off work to junior devs once the contract's signed unless you oversee tight milestones.
- In-house Teams: If you’ve got a hospital network with deep pockets, building your own team makes sense (especially for complex integrations and long-term support). But the first year salary plus benefits for a five-person dev team (frontend, backend, mobile, DevOps, QA) in the UK is £275,000–£380,000 and rising, especially if you need AI or cybersecurity experts.
There’s no silver bullet answer here. Startups often kick off with an agency to launch, then switch to in-house talent for long-term expansion. One thing everyone agrees on: never skimp on a QA lead or compliance consultant. Fixing bugs post-launch can cost 10x what you would have spent catching things early.
If you want to stretch your budget, try partnerships with universities or medtech accelerators: they sometimes have deals with vetted agencies or offer in-kind expert advice. And always, always check references and portfolio projects before you sign a contract—an app that “looks cool” can crash your reputation if it doesn’t meet health data regs.
Tips to Control Telehealth App Costs Without Cutting Corners
Let’s face it, after hearing all these numbers, it’s easy to just run for cover. But there’s hope. There are some proven methods to stop your budget from spiraling out of control, while still getting an app that’s safe, scalable, and actually solves problems for doctors and patients.
- Start lean. Focus on the essential features—secure chat, basic patient profiles, appointment booking. Launch fast, then collect user feedback aggressively. Better to launch something “small but perfect” than overbuild based on guesswork.
- Pick frameworks designed for healthcare. Don’t reinvent the wheel with custom code for everything. Open-source platforms like OpenMRS or Medplum can cut your costs by up to 40% if you don’t mind tweaking instead of starting from zero.
- Buy, don’t build, for key integrations. Payment gateways, calendar APIs, and even messaging can be plugged in with trusted third-party solutions. Saves months—and countless headaches.
- Schedule frequent milestone reviews. Set clear goals for each phase, and don’t pay for work that’s only “almost done.”
- Document everything. Specification changes are cost killers. A tiny tweak—like switching from SMS to push notifications—can mean days of extra engineering if it isn’t captured up front.
- Leave room for scaling. You might launch with 100 users, but if you crack the right GP partnership, you could be looking at 10,000 signups overnight. Build on scalable cloud platforms from day one, and negotiate usage-based pricing early.
- Set a "burn rate" cap. Only release new funding or payments after milestones are hit. Keeps everyone on the same page—and protects against feature creep.
If your team’s new to health tech, find a co-founder or advisor who’s shipped HIPAA or NHS-compliant software before. Their insights are gold. Last year, I met a team that cut launch costs by 30% just because their lead knew all the NHS compliance shortcuts. Better to pay for hard-won experience than to clean up messes later.
And don’t forget: There are grants in the UK (like Innovate UK’s Smart Grants) and NHS Digital pathways that can match-fund 30-70% of R&D for new digital health apps—if you can wrestle through the paperwork and hit deadlines. These can literally save your idea’s life if money’s running thin at the finish line.
