7 key challenges in telehealth software development and how to solve them

Healthcare is changing fast. And software is leading the charge. 

Virtual visits, remote monitoring, and digital records are becoming the norm, not the exception.

But building great telehealth software isn’t easy. 

You’re not just creating another app – you’re dealing with unstable connections, sensitive medical data, strict regulations, and patients who aren’t always tech-savvy.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

In this article, we’ll break down the 7 biggest challenges in telehealth software development and give you practical advice on how to solve each one.

Let’s dive in!

Handling unstable network conditions

Unstable internet is one of the biggest blockers in telehealth. And it’s the one your users will feel first.

A laggy video call can frustrate a doctor, sure. But a dropped session during a patient’s mental health crisis? That’s worse than inconvenient. That’s damaging.

Here’s the reality: not everyone has a strong internet connection.

In the US alone, around 24 million people still lack access to reliable, high speed internet.

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And it’s not just people in rural areas. It includes urban homes with poor Wi-Fi setups or shared connections. 

So, if your telehealth software breaks under those conditions, it breaks for millions of potential users.

One of the biggest mistakes you can make is designing just for perfect environments.

Telehealth isn’t Netflix. You can’t afford a buffering screen – you need to adapt. Here’s what you should do:

• Start with adaptive bitrate streaming – This lets you adjust video quality in real time. If the connection drops, it downgrades the stream instead of cutting it completely. It’s better to have a grainy image than no image at all.
• Add auto-reconnect features – Dropped sessions shouldn’t mean lost sessions. Your platform should reconnect users automatically. No prompts and no confusion, just a quick return to where they left off.
• Support asynchronous communication – Not everything has to happen in real time. Messaging, image uploads, and voice notes can give patients other ways to communicate, especially when live video isn’t possible.
• Use local caching – If doctors are reviewing patient history or taking notes, they shouldn’t lose progress if the signal dips. Cache locally and sync later when the connection returns.

Take WhatsApp as an example. It queues messages when offline and sends them the moment you’re reconnected.

That’s the approach you should take. Your users shouldn’t need to worry about the backend – it should just work.

A simple rule: build for the worst-case scenario, not the best one.

Because that’s where a lot of your users will be.

Regulatory compliance

You don’t get a second chance with compliance. 

That’s not fear-mongering. It’s just how healthcare works.

Telehealth platforms deal with sensitive personal data. That means they’re subject to strict laws like HIPAA in the US and GDPR in the EU. And dozens more depending on your market.

They’re hard rules with real consequences. For example, here’s how HIPAA affects development:

Key HIPAA rules that impact software development: overview

One misstep can mean a lawsuit. Or worse – a severe breach that destroys trust.

In 2024 alone, around 170 million healthcare records were exposed due to data breaches. 

A large portion came from platforms and software that didn’t meet compliance standards. That’s the real cost of cutting corners.

Don’t treat compliance like a checkbox or something to “handle later.” That’s a trap.

You need to think about it from day one:

• Start with data architecture – Where is data stored? Who can access it? Is it encrypted in transit and at rest? These are non-negotiables.
• Involve legal early – Your team shouldn’t have to guess what counts as compliant. You need legal and tech working side-by-side. Double-check every decision against the rules.
• Respect data residency – If you’re working with EU users, their data must stay within the EU. The same goes for other regions with strict residency rules. Know where your servers are.
• Build consent into the product – Laws like GDPR aren’t just about storage, they’re about control. Users should be able to see, edit, and delete their data and you need to make it easy to do.

Healthcare isn’t your average market. It’s high-risk and high-responsibility.

And if you treat compliance as a core feature, not afterthought, you’ll win in the long-term.

Data privacy and security

In healthcare, trust is everything. 

The best way to build that trust is keeping patient data safe.

You’re not just storing usernames and passwords. You’re handling diagnoses, prescriptions, therapy notes – some of the most deeply personal information out there.

You can’t afford to take risks here. And we mean that literally – the average cost of a data breach in healthcare ($10.93 million) is double the average compared to other industries:

source: Syteca

Data privacy and security should be your top priorities

But, with the number and sophistication of threats growing almost exponentially in recent years, ensuring data privacy and security isn’t easy.

So, how do you get it? Here’s a couple of tips you should consider:

• Start with encryption – Any data you handle should be encrypted at every step, in transit and at rest, AES-256 is the standard. And for video calls, go end-to-end.
• Limit access – Not everyone on your team needs to see everything. Use role-based access control to restrict who can do what. And log every action. If something goes wrong, you’ll need a clear audit trail.
• Use secure APIs – APIs are often the weakest link. Secure them with authentication, rate limits, and input validation. Think of every endpoint as a door. You need to control who walks through it.
• Go beyond the tech – Security isn’t just code, it’s culture.  Educate your team, run phishing simulations, and make security part of the workflow.
• Plan for failure – Have an incident response plan. Make sure you know who to call, what to say, and how to quickly contain a breach.

Remember, security isn’t a one-time task, it’s a mindset.

And you need to build it from the start. Because trust takes years to build and seconds to lose.

Integration and interoperability with existing systems

Healthcare doesn’t happen in a vacuum. 

Doctors, clinics, and hospitals already use software every day  – everything from EHRs and scheduling tools to lab systems and billing platforms. 

And your software needs to connect with them. That’s what interoperability is all about.

source: CodeIT

That’s where many telehealth apps fall apart. They’re built in isolation, without thinking about the real-world systems they need to talk to.

And here’s the problem: most of those systems are old. Some were built before smartphones even existed.

Integration isn’t plug-and-play. It’s often messy, undocumented, and inconsistent.

But it’s critical.

If your software doesn’t integrate with the clinic’s EHR, it creates extra work. Doctors have to copy-paste notes and admins need to re-enter data. 

And that’s how you build something no one will use.

For a start, you need to support industry data standards like HL7 and FHIR.

Also, don’t assume every integration will look the same. Build APIs that can handle edge cases like custom fields and weird data formats.

And you need to think long term. Integration isn’t a one-off task, so you should build a process to maintain your integrations over time.

Remember, good integration removes friction.

It saves doctors time, reduces errors, and keeps patient records accurate and up to date. 

And that’s why you need to

Managing scope creep

Scope creep is quiet. It doesn’t hit all at once. It builds one feature, one “quick fix” at a time.

And suddenly, your release date slips by three months. And your product is twice as big and half as focused.

It’s one of the top reasons digital products fail. Not because the idea was bad. Because the team couldn’t stop adding to it.

And even the best teams can fall victim to scope creep.

Here’s the truth: you don’t need more features. You just need the right ones.

Start with a locked-in scope for your software’s first version, or the minimum viable product (MVP).

What’s the core problem your product solves? That’s your filter. If a feature doesn’t support it, it can wait.

Use prioritization frameworks to stay on track. The MoSCoW method is a good place to start. Sort features into:

• Must have
• Should have
• Could have
• Won’t have

Then lock in only the “must haves” for your MVP. Everything else gets pushed to later versions.

RICE is another powerful tool. It helps you make decisions based on:

• Reach
• Impact
• Confidence
• Effort

Run every feature idea through it. Prioritize based on numbers, not gut feelings.

Scope creep often comes from good intentions. A stakeholder has an idea. An investor wants “just one more thing.”

Here’s the problem: they’re not building the product. You are.

And your job isn’t to say yes to everyone. Your job is to deliver something useful that actually works.

That’s why you need a solid change management process. 

If something truly urgent comes up mid-project, you need a way to handle it. But it should force a trade-off. Add a feature? Drop something else or move the deadline.

That pressure will keep your scope honest and development on track.

And most importantly – get comfortable with version 1 being imperfect. That’s the point.

You’re not building the final product. You’re building the first version that gets feedback. 

And feedback is what drives growth.

Building an intuitive user experience (UX)

If your product confuses users, it fails. Simple as that.

If you’re building telehealth software, this is even more critical. 

You’re not just designing for tech-savvy professionals. You’re designing for patients, too. 

Some of them are older and don’t understand tech. But, a good user experience (UX) meets all of them where they are. 

UX isn’t just about a beautiful design – far from it. It’s about clarity, speed, and consistency.

And getting it right is tricky.

The first, and most important, thing you should do is talk with real users.

Assume nothing and interview doctors, observe patients, and watch where they hesitate when they use your software. Every pause is a design flaw waiting to be fixed.

Here’s what else you should do to build an intuitive experience:

• Prioritize accessibility – Big buttons. High contrast. Clear fonts. Voice-over support. Your product should work for people with low vision, arthritis, or cognitive issues.
• Make onboarding frictionless – The first 5 minutes decide everything. If users can’t figure it out without help, they’ll drop it.
• Cut what you can – You need to make sure every click, every screen, every form field needs to be there. If not, remove it. Less clutter means less confusion.
• Design for context – A doctor using your app in a hospital doesn’t have time to tap through five screens. And a patient in bed with a fever doesn’t, either. Design flows around real-life situations, not ideal ones.

And keep in mind, intuitive means invisible.

The best UX feels like nothing at all. It gets out of the way so users can focus on what really matters: their care.

Scalability and performance

Your product might work perfectly today. But what if 10x more users log in tomorrow?

Scalability isn’t just about handling traffic. It’s about staying reliable as demand grows.

It’s about performance under pressure – when a doctor opens ten records in five seconds, or when a thousand patients try to join calls at once.

And here’s the thing: your users don’t care how fast your app was last week.

They care about right now. And in healthcare, every second matters.

Here’s what you should to build scalable telehealth software:

• Build from growth from day one – Start with a scalable architecture. Deploy on cloud platforms that auto-scale like AWS, GCP, or Azure. Set up load balancing, use CDNs, and make sure your backend can handle sudden increases in user numbers.
• Monitor everything – Use real-time performance tools like New Relic and Dynatrace. Track load times, error rates, CPU spikes. You want to catch problems before your users do. If something breaks at 2 a.m., you should know by 2:01.
• Run regular stress tests – Simulate the worst-case scenarios. What happens when 50,000 people try to log in? What if 1000 video sessions run at once? Don’t guess, test.
• Optimize relentlessly – Slow queries? Refactor them. Bloated assets? Compress them. Unused code? Cut it. Every millisecond you save adds up and users feel the difference.
• Design for graceful failure – Sometimes, things break. What matters is how your system responds. Show error messages that make sense and offer fallback options. Don’t leave users staring at a blank screen.

Performance is invisible – until it isn’t.

Your product should feel fast, light, and effortless to use even under load.

Telehealth software development challenges: FAQs

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