Develop a Doctor On-demand App Like Zocdoc- Process, Benefits, and Features

Let’s create an On-demand Doctor app like Zocdoc.

The healthcare industry has many challenges that need advanced solutions. One of those challenges is delays in appointments and patient-doctor communication gaps. But, technology has bridged this gap.

Today, patients do not have to wait for an appointment; they can manage their bookings effortlessly with doctor-on-demand apps.

From offering personalized guidance to real-time solutions, these apps are revolutionizing healthcare for everyone.

Apps like Zocdoc have streamlined the appointment booking process, making lives easier and get better treatment whenever necessary.

It allows people to get on-demand access to nearby doctors at the earliest. This is why many companies look forward to developing more doctor-on-demand applications like Zocdoc for simplified appointment scheduling. 

As a leading healthcare app development solution provider, we help simplify your healthcare complexities in 2025.

Doctor Appointment Apps Like Zocdoc Market

The doctor appointment app offers flexibility and ease of monitoring and booking, making it a prime category in the healthcare industry. Today, people want simple yet instant healthcare solutions. It is surveyed that-

• 25% of patients prefer to book appointments online.
• Online booking platforms encourage to keep bookings, 70% of patients and 80% of doctors agree with it.
• People actively use mobile devices for healthcare queries.
• Digital healthcare solutions have streamlined the patient’s journey and reduced visits to doctors.

These reasons have increased the online healthcare platforms market. The global medical scheduling market will reach $789.56 million by 2027, growing fast at 13% per year, with more than 40% of appointments booked after business hours, showing strong demand for flexible booking options. 

These stats show why your hospital must have a mobile app for scheduling appointments in 2025. So, start your doctor appointment booking app like Zocdoc journey with leading healthcare app development service providers. 

Benefits of Doctor On-demand App Development like Zocdoc

First, understand what Zocdoc is and how an app like Zocdoc helps your hospital.

“Zocdoc is a marketplace built for patients and doctors for simplified appointments. It uses AI to match patients with the right specialist for their health needs. Plus, it shows which doctors accept the patient’s health insurance, making it easier to choose the right doctor.”

Doctor on-demand app not only helps patients but are also beneficial for doctors to manage their appointments. Let’s see how it benefits all.

Benefits for Doctors

• Time-Saving: Doctors are busy and don’t have time to manage appointments. An app can take care of scheduling for them, saving time.
• Grow Patient Base: Doctors can connect with more patients on an online appointment platform. It helps them target more patients, growing their user base.
• Reduce No-Shows: these apps send automatic reminders to remind them about their upcoming appointments, reducing no-show cases.

Clinics 

• Efficiency: Automating appointment scheduling helps avoid mistakes, like double-booking. This makes managing appointments much smoother.
• Less Staff Needed: Instead of having multiple people manage appointments, a clinic only needs one person to handle support, reducing the need for extra staff.
• Cost-Saving: clinics can rely on online appointment bookings to manage bookings, reducing human errors and the costs of hiring extra staff for manual management. 
• Streamlined Operations: by automating the scheduling process, clinics can use their staff in more relevant areas like taking care of patients and understanding their issues.

Patients

• No, Waiting on Calls: patients can book appointments directly without waiting on the phone. They can just book a slot suitable to their time.
• Easy Booking Anywhere: Patients are flexible to book an appointment anytime, anywhere, using just their smartphone and internet, without visiting the clinic.
• Cancel or Reschedule Anytime: If plans change, patients can update their appointments at any time, even late at night, using the app.

An online doctor appointment app benefits everyone. However, the market growth is high, it has less competition where businesses can enter with a solid doctor on-demand app development process. Let’s understand the process of developing a medical app like Zocdoc.

Step-by-step Process for Doctor On-demand App Development like Zocdoc

Developing an appointment booking app like Zocdoc requires a strategic approach. From detailed market research to understanding the existing market’s pain points, and development process, here is a simple 8-step process to develop a doctor on-demand app like Zocdoc.

Step 1- Prepare your Database

Create a database for the app that consists of doctor details. To offer a healthcare marketplace like Zocdoc, it must store all relevant information about the doctors. This helps patients to refine their reseach based on unique requirements. 

This information helps patients quickly find and book appointments, saving time for both patients and doctors. This makes the whole scheduling process simpler and more efficient for everyone.

Step 2- Hire an App Development Team Experts in Developing Doctor Appointment Booking App

Conduct market research to find the most reliable company expertise in developing doctor on-demand apps like Zocdoc. You can outsource the entire development project or hire dedicated developers. 

Outsourcing companies might be a costly affair but the most suitable option. They provide a team of experts to handle the entire app development process.

When selecting a company, check its reputation, experience, and customer reviews. It’s also important to communicate clearly to make sure the project goes smoothly.

Step 3- Technology Stack for Doctor on-demand app development

Choosing the technology stack is crucial to your app’s success. It helps your app scale, offer flexibility, and deliver an advanced user experience. The right technology helps you integrate add-on features to stay up-to-date. 

Here is a tech stack for doctor on-demand app development like Zocdoc.

Step 4- Create and Verify Prototype

After choosing the right tech stack, developers create a prototype or MVP version. It helps you add the relevant features and functionalities to understand how the app will look and perform.

It is the most basic version of the app, verified by the customer for improvement. 

Once the prototype is ready, the design team works on the UI/UX design. They decide on colors, fonts, and the overall layout to make sure the app looks good and is easy to use.

They also make sure the design works well on different phone screens and sizes.

Step 5- Ensure HIPPA Compliance

As the app is meant to gather users’ data, it must be secure. This is why several regulations like HIPPA regulations are followed to ensure one’s safety.

These regulations improve trust and protect patient information from being accessed by unauthorized people.

The team needs to understand healthcare security rules and use the best methods to protect the app. Here are some important things they’ll do to make the app secure:

• SSL connections to make sure patient data is safely sent over the internet.
• Encrypt sensitive data, like Protected Health Information (PHI), to keep it safe.
• Follow rules like the HITECH Act and GDPR to ensure the app meets legal standards.
• Consider using HIPAA-compliant cloud platforms for safely storing and managing patient data.

Step 6- Payment Integrations

If your appointment booking app has an online payment feature, it will reduce the no-show issue. Because if the patient has made the payment, they will surely visit.

If you integrate the payment gateways into your app it will only help you succeed and deliver a strong user experience. 

Choose the right payment provider that helps in transparent and secured transactions. Some popular payment providers for healthcare apps are Stripe, PayPal, and Braintree. 

Step 7- Testing and Release

Testing the app is necessary to check if the app is working as expected, delivering the same experience across devices. This phase allows developers and testers to identify and fix potential bugs before launching.

Once the app is tested and approved, businesses can launch it across Play Stores- Google Play Store and Apple Store. 

Step 8- Support and Maintenance 

To keep your appointment app up-to-date, it is necessary to offer consistent support and maintenance. It helps you add new features and fix ongoing bugs to deliver an advanced user experience.

Today, the healthcare industry also uses AI, ML, Blockchain, IoT, and more to offer advanced healthcare solutions. So supporting your app and integrating the latest technologies are a must to stay in the competition. 

This is why, businesses must understand what features they must integrate to stand out in the crowd.

Key Features of a Successful Doctor Appointment App

Here are the key features of a successful doctor appointment app.

Telemedicine

It is a must-have feature for your appointment booking app. Patients can connect with doctors remotely to get quick advice and prescriptions without visiting the clinics.

It makes healthcare more accessible for both doctors and patients, delivering a better healthcare experience.

Quick patient check-in

This feature helps patients confirm their appointments before they arrive at the clinic. They can enter their details, select the reason for their visit, and fill out forms via the app, reducing waiting time and paperwork. It streamlines the visit, saving time and improving efficiency for both patients and doctors.

At-home medical services 

This feature allows patients to book a home visit with a nearby doctor for services like general check-ups, tests, or even emergency care.

Adding this feature to your app helps doctors expand their reach, and offer flexible and personalized care. Offering home visits can improve patient satisfaction, as many people appreciate the convenience and comfort of receiving care at home. 

In-built payment

Having in-app payment facilities will help patients to pay while making a booking to confirm their slot. Not only this, doctors can also leverage this feature to reduce no-shows of patients, as they have already paid. This feature makes the payment process quick, easy, and secure for both patients and healthcare providers.

Doctor Listings with Search and Filters

Your app needs to have a wide list of doctors and a good search feature. This way, if you need to find a specialist, you can easily filter and narrow down your options to find the right doctor in just a few seconds.

Reminders and notifications 

If the appointment booking app notifies upcoming bookings, patients would be less likely to miss their appointments. This feature helps everyone stay organized and avoid missing important things like appointments or payments.

Geo-location based search

This feature allows patients to find doctors or clinics nearby using their phone’s location. It is necessary to offer faster access to personalized healthcare, better convenience, and improved patient satisfaction. This feature improves the speed, accessibility, and efficiency of healthcare, benefiting both patients and providers.

Doctor review

This feature allows patients to review doctor and their services. These reviews are accessible to all patients to make the right choice in case of emergency.

Patients can sort nearby doctors based on their ratings given by other patients. This feature builds trust, helps patients make informed decisions, and encourages doctors to continually improve their services.

Stakeholder’s profile

These features allow everyone to have their own profile on the app. Each profile contains important information and details relevant to their role.

Adding this feature improves communication, helps manage patient information, and makes the app more efficient by giving each user the right tools for their role.

These features are basic to have in your appointment booking app. Here are some advanced features of Zocdoc that you must consider to integrate.

Advanced Features of Zocdoc

Zocdoc uses technology to connect patients with the right doctors and reduce wait times, helping hospitals and clinics across the U.S. and helping patients in all 50 states. 

Some of the technologies that give Zocdoc an advantage include special syncing tools, a search engine powered by patient preferences, artificial intelligence (AI), and a system that helps manage patient data efficiently. 

Proprietary sync technology

It allows patients to see real-time appointment availability from doctors. It connects Zocdoc to the calendars of healthcare providers, even if they use different systems to manage appointments.

This way, patients can quickly find open slots and book their visits without having to call the doctor’s office. It makes the whole booking process faster and more convenient for everyone.

Patient-powered search

The patient-powered search engine uses machine learning to help patients find the right doctor by letting them search using their own words—whether that’s common terms, slang, or even misspelled symptoms.

This makes it easier for patients to describe what they’re feeling and still find the right provider. It also shows available appointment slots, so patients can quickly book an appointment.

Artificial Intelligence

Zocdoc’s app uses AI to help patients check if their insurance will cover their doctor’s visit. The AI can read and understand information from thousands of insurance cards, match them with the right insurance provider, and make sure everything is verified.

This helps remove the confusion and delays that can come with using insurance, making it easier for people to access healthcare.

Online active search ingestion algorithm

Zocdoc uses a system called OASIS to instantly update a doctor’s information whenever it changes. For example, if a doctor changes their schedule or contact details, the system makes these updates in real time without slowing down the app.

OASIS works by using special tools (called AWS Lambda and SQS) to automatically trigger updates when new information comes in.

This means the app always has the most up-to-date information about doctors, providing a smooth and fast experience for both patients and doctors.

Such features may lift your budget but help you make a significant impact in the growing healthcare industry. But, how much does it cost to build a doctor-on-demand app like Zocdoc? Let’s explore.

Doctor Booking Appointment App Development Cost [Overview]

Developing an appointment booking app like Zocdoc requires time and investment. Here is a quick timeline overview with costs. 

However, this timeline and cost range is an estimation. The cost may vary depending on several factors. But, to reduce your cost and speed up your market entry, choose a white-label doctor on-demand app. 

Consult with the right healthcare app development company to customize the white-label app that aligns with your business goals. 

White-label your Doctor Appointment Booking App with OnGraph for $5k

The healthcare industry is growing and offering advanced solutions for better and personalized care. One of those solutions is a doctor appointment scheduling app.

It has streamlined the process of how patients connect and book appointments from their mobile devices. The goal is to make healthcare simpler and accessible for everyone, from checking open slots to getting virtual diagnoses.

To make a significant difference, you can build an advanced doctor on-demand app like Zocdoc for a wider audience.

At OnGraph, we build healthcare solutions that align with your goal and personalize healthcare experiences.

With our white-label doctor on-demand appointment app, you can enter the market within a week.

What we cover-

• Advanced features
• Low-cost customization
• Comply with the latest regulations
• Integrated with AI/ML
• And more

Connect with our experts and customize your solution today.