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Build Healthcare Insurance App Marketplace in USA: Cost, Time, Team

Quick Summary: In the absence of universal healthcare system in the USA, many people still struggle to cope up with rising healthcare costs. Several survey results show every one in three US households delay access to care due to costly care. What makes the situation even more severe is the fact that government pays for only 65% of healthcare costs. Several private healthcare insurers emerge as the ray of hope. But here too, there is a problem, a very serious problem for people!

The marketplace model has been very successful across all industries including healthcare.

It empowers users to compare different options in one place and make the most personalized and easy decision before buying any subscription, service or product.

For example, a marketplace for doctors gives users the superpower to search all nearby doctors, compare their fees, accepted insurance, timing, user ratings etc.

Similarly, the healthcare insurance marketplace app enables users to find, compare and purchase the most suitable healthcare insurance plan from a single platform.

Since the idea of the healthcare insurance marketplace is not yet overly explored and it solves real-life problems of users, it is worth every penny of your investment!

Why is there a real need for a healthcare insurance marketplace app?

We recently came across news stating a US-based insurtech startup Bright Health raised a whopping $750 million.

Out of curiosity, when we searched on Google, we found there are more than 900 healthcare insurance companies in the USA that offer medical coverage.

And almost all of these healthcare insurance companies have enough funds to do marketing on a large scale.

Due to their aggressive marketing strategies, people usually end up picking up the wrong healthcare insurance plan as not every plan is made for everyone.

So to help users make the right choice based on their needs and budget, the best thing you can do is build a healthcare insurance marketplace and let users compare all plans before buying one.

Because it is not at all feasible for users to compare all insurance plans of different insurers manually.

What makes users more vulnerable to the wrong choice is the fact that all healthcare insurance companies are going online, raising millions of dollars, launching multiple new medical insurance plans and adopting most ‘influencing’ marketing channels such as social media and other short-video platforms.

We last year delivered a project of telemedicine marketplace where users can search and compare different telemedicine providers.

Almost 90% of initial users have reported that the telemedicine marketplace has helped them find the most valuable but underrated providers and cut down virtual care costs by 20%.

That’s how the beneficial marketplace model is in the healthcare industry!

Understand every aspect of the healthcare marketplace model (the working of it!)

A healthcare marketplace model works on 3 fronts.

Front #1: Healthcare insurers

  • Healthcare insurers register themselves and list down all of their plans, benefits and other information.
  • From their dashboard, they can track how many users have shown interest in their plans, answer questions raised by users, promote their plans etc.

Front #2: Users

  • Users sign up by adding their basic details and search for the healthcare insurance plans either for themselves or for their families.
  • Users can apply several filters and find the most suitable plan.
  • Users can also rely on the marketplace’s algorithm which suggests personalized plans to users based on their needs and goals.
  • Users buy a plan by either making full payment in a single shot or choosing a monthly payment option.

Front #3: Admin

  • Admin has to ensure that all of the features and marketplace itself must be working properly.
  • He needs to solve all payment disputes and other general queries raised by both insurers and users.

How to make money with the healthcare marketplace app? Top revenue streams revealed

We know healthcare marketplace app development is a costly affair. Thus, more ROI and reaching the break-even point quicker are very crucial for you.

The following are the top revenue streams that you can take into account to make money with the medical insurance marketplace app.

Commission-based model:

Under this model, you charge a fixed percentage of commission from listed insurers on their every sold healthcare insurance plan through your platform.

This one is the major revenue stream for almost all marketplaces.

But the challenge for you here is deciding the commission percentage and ensuring that your platform will help insurers get new customers.

In-app promotion for insurers:

To get the attention of more users and close higher sales, you let listed insurers promote their offerings and plans in your marketplace. By paying a fixed amount as a promotion fee, they can skip the queue and rank on the top of the page where there are higher chances of user conversion.

Add-on services:

For both users and insurers, you can launch some add-on services and make money on each service.

For example, you can launch a personal assistant add-on service for users under which users can talk to real experts and seek help in choosing the best medical coverage plan for them!

Similarly, you can launch a personal assistant add-on service for insurers under which insurers can seek expert design, copywriting & marketing help in listing their plans on your marketplace.

Make your healthcare insurance marketplace platform future-ready by embedding these 2 technologies

One proven way to dominate the market with mobile or web solutions is by adopting fascinating technologies and letting users explore those technologies for solving their daily life problems.

Talking about the medical insurance marketplace app, you can leverage the following 2 technologies to not only solve user problems more effectively but to gain a competitive advantage.

AI, Machine Learning for personalized delivery of service:

The key to success in the startup ecosystem is providing personalized content or service or products to users.

In your case, there will be a lot of users who don’t have a single clarity while they are on your platform exploring different healthcare insurance plans of different providers.

If you don’t drag them further into their comfort zone by helping them in selecting the most suitable medical coverage plan, they will end the session instantly and will never come back.

But you can convert this type of visitors into customers by suggesting personalized healthcare insurance plans after analyzing their needs and budget with the help of AI and machine learning technologies.

The fusion of impactful AI techniques and sophisticated machine learning algorithms understand what each user is looking for and only suggest insurance plans around what they are looking for.

Such a personalized delivery of service results in more engagement and a higher probability of user conversion.

Chatbot for remarkable customer service:

Well, users will in all cases have several queries and doubts which your customer support team cannot handle efficiently and effectively as humans have certain limits.

So, we would suggest replacing customer service executives with a chatbot.

If you don’t know, a chatbot is a piece of software integrated into your marketplace platform, capable of answering every relevant question of users within seconds without human intervention.

A chatbot will not only save your customer service cost but facilitate you to offer an instant reply to queries raised by the users.

Top FAQs on development, cost, timeline, delivery and resources

1. How much does it cost to build a healthcare insurance marketplace?

Well, estimating the development cost without knowing your exact requirements is similar to celebrating Christmas in February – just for the sake of joy to feel good!

The app/web development costs depend on several factors such as technology platform, API, feature set. The best way to know the precise cost of development is by sharing your requirements with us and receiving a personalized quote from us with a free consultation.

2. How can I build a medical insurance marketplace app when I don’t have enough budget?

You can opt-in for the MVP model under which we build a platform for you with only basic & useful features and upgrade it once you test it in the real market or raise more funds.

You can also build a cross-platform app that runs both on Android and iOS with the same codebase. And if you’re looking for a more affordable option, PWA works best for you.

A PWA has all features similar to a mobile app but it runs on mobile and web browsers.

3. How long does it take to build an app for medical insurance?

All we can say is, it is a time-consuming process as app development is not just about coding. The entire app development lifecycle includes discovery, documentation, UI/UX, development, QA testing, compliance audit, piloting and launching. Thus, we cannot estimate the timeline without knowing the deliverables. But on average, it takes at least 90 days to build and deliver mobile or web apps.

4. How many resources work on an app/web development project?

An outstanding mobile or web app is the result of combined efforts put by developers, UI/UX designers, compliance specialists, QA engineers and business analysts.

5. Who will own the code of the developed platform? And is my idea secure?

You will be the ultimate owner of the code. We share the code ownership and all other rights with you legally. And talking about ideas, we sign NDA. Meaning, your idea is secure with us!