How mobile apps are transforming the healthcare market: A look at the MedTech industry from Magora’s perspective

The average user spends about five hours interacting with their mobile phone daily. More and more aspects of consumer life are transitioning into the digital world — people order groceries, watch movies, and learn through mobile apps. Additionally, mobile health apps have surged in popularity, as people now rely on them for medical consultations and treatments. This trend in MedTech is partly driven by the pandemic, with COVID-19 prompting people to rethink their approach to healthcare. Managing one’s health through specialized apps has become a convenient solution for modern consumers.

Magora, an IT company, identified this trend towards digital healthcare early on and introduced its own developments tailored to the unique needs of the industry, propelling the company to a new level of growth. It rapidly grew from a small startup to a global corporation with offices in various countries and is now ranked in the Top 3 developers of mobile and web applications by Clutch. In an interview, Magora co-founder Vasilii Domnikov shared his insights on the future of the MedTech industry, how his business is delivering innovative IT solutions, and creating user-friendly apps for their clients.

Vasilii, you’re the co-founder of Magora. Can you tell us about your business and the type of clients you work with?

We are an international IT company that creates web and mobile applications for clients from Europe, the US, Australia, and China. Our experience spans across industries such as logistics, telecommunications, entertainment apps, healthcare, and more.

Can you share your journey within the company and how your expertise has influenced its growth?

In 2015, I began as CTO and immediately pushed the idea of scaling the company and expanding into international markets. By 2016, we had opened an office in London. This led to our first major international projects. My prior experience inspired the development of a consulting arm within the company, which completely changed our approach to development. We focused on thoroughly understanding clients’ needs, conducting in-depth evaluations of their businesses, and analyzing competitors. My experience with startups, along with the ability to stay calm and focused on business goals despite external challenges, helped us overcome various barriers to growth. My strength lies in finding the right people and giving them the freedom to work, as well as motivating the team towards success.

Let’s give readers a behind-the-scenes look at your process — how do you create applications?

My team uses proven strategies to develop a complete roadmap with key milestones such as monetization models and business optimization solutions. During the research phase, we determine if the idea, once realized as a software product, can effectively solve the client’s needs. That’s why we start with a thorough analysis to avoid unnecessary expenses: defining the project scope, key software functions, market and competitor research, monetization strategy, risk management, and creating a design concept for the future product.

How would you describe the role of apps for businesses working in the B2C sector?

In an era when more people use smartphones to manage daily tasks, mobile apps are becoming increasingly crucial for businesses, and their impact will only continue to grow year by year. Developing a proprietary mobile app has become a hallmark of business quality, with large companies considering it a prestige project. Apps help strengthen brand identity and increase recognition. One key aspect of the modern development market is the fast-changing user preferences, so it’s necessary to apply innovative technologies like remote control, artificial intelligence, and content creation programs to rapidly develop and update apps without compromising quality.

You initially gained experience working in various fields, but over time, your client portfolio has become more focused on the healthcare sector. Can you elaborate on that?

Yes, many of our clients today are connected with medicine. MedTech is one of the most important areas of our work, and quite a large part of our client pool is made up of companies from this sphere.

What healthcare applications have you released so far?

We create apps for health monitoring and have released a whole series of solutions aimed at diabetic patients. We have an app that allows you to have an initial consultation with doctors from the comfort of your home. Our other app allows users to keep electronic health records and share them with their doctors. There are also solutions exclusively for business, such as a mobile application for the sales department of an international pharmaceutical company, which allows you to manage a network of pharmacies from your mobile phone or desktop computer. One of our most successful projects is an accelerated COVID-19 testing system for remote certification for travelling. Another of our digital products in MedTech enables patient treatment and rehabilitation through a mobile game.

How do you assess the current state of the healthcare app market, and what challenges do customers face?

Developing mobile and web apps for healthcare comes with unique challenges due to the stringent regulations involved, as it concerns people’s health. By the end of 2024, the medical app market in IT is experiencing significant growth but is also facing some challenges that affect developers and customers.

The first challenge is regulatory compliance and data security: one of the main difficulties for customers is meeting strict requirements for data protection and regulations like GDPR or HIPAA in the US. Medical apps must ensure a high level of security and privacy for patient data. Customers are demanding advanced solutions from developers to protect data, such as integrating blockchain-based technologies for transparency and security.

The second challenge is integrating with existing healthcare systems: Many healthcare facilities already have complex IT infrastructures, and customers face issues integrating new apps with their existing systems. This requires flexibility from developers and the ability to adapt solutions, complicating the development and implementation process.

To improve applications in the medical field, as in any other, it is important to keep up with the latest innovations. What technologies are you implementing and consider the most important for the future of the industry?

Magora actively adopts and adapts key technology trends to stay at the forefront of the IT market and meet the needs of our customers. Our company is already actively implementing the latest features of iOS 18, released in September 2024. By doing so, we are able to provide customers with innovative and high-performance tandem solutions of iOS 18 and our IT products.

With the new iOS 18 APIs and features, our mobile apps now run with improved performance and security. We are already using updated privacy features and more powerful AI algorithms to provide our customers with better results and maximum data protection.

The Magora team is already building apps with increased machine learning integration, allowing our clients to offer users a personalised experience. Using new SwiftUI tools, we have also achieved improved interfaces and increased application speed. We also adapted our solution architecture to iOS 18 updates, including enhanced notifications and improved graphics and animation capabilities. This has allowed us to optimise our development processes and offer our customers apps that meet the latest standards.

We also continue to review and update our products to reflect the new features of iOS 18, so that the apps Magora creates are faster, more intuitive and more secure. Our focus on improving the user experience and integrating the most advanced technologies available on the iOS platform plays an important role.

And how are you using AI to improve your team’s efficiency?

With AI, we plan to develop faster and more efficiently, and to focus more on ways to solve customers’ business problems in different ways. By automating routine development tasks we plan to allow developers to focus on complex problems. We are now learning how to use AI to help solve our clients’ problems 5x faster. Co-pilot, Replit Agent and various chatbots like v0 help you design and program UI elements with greater efficiency. Now a programmer can write lines of code in 5 minutes.

Are you already using blockchain technology in your applications?

Not yet, but in the near future Magora will be implementing blockchain technology to create more secure data management and transaction systems. We will help our customers improve the security of their applications by integrating distributed networks. For example, we will offer solutions for decentralised data storage and implementation of smart contracts, which is especially relevant for financial and logistics applications. We plan to focus on the development of decentralised applications (dApps) and offer customers more secure and transparent ways to manage data and transactions.

Another important technology that is changing the industry is augmented reality. How can its development affect mobile development?

Yes, we are looking in that direction too. Magora plans to implement AR solutions to improve user interaction in mobile apps and websites. These technologies will enable our clients to create interactive products, which is particularly useful in the areas of learning, e-commerce and entertainment.

For example, we will develop virtual fitting rooms, interactive guides and AR tutorials to increase user engagement and offer new ways to interact with products. We want to focus on creating cross-platform AR solutions. This will allow our customers to integrate these technologies across multiple devices and operating systems.

By the way, AR and VR technologies are increasingly being used in the medical field. For example, for training doctors and providing patients with remote counselling. But customers face the problem of adapting these technologies to medical standards and user needs, which requires developers to take an individual approach.

For mobile applications, connection speed is important. 5G connectivity opens up new opportunities for fast data exchange, improved performance of high-traffic applications. How are you utilising these opportunities in your business?

With the development of 5G, Magora will develop mobile and web applications with higher speeds and lower latency, enabling sophisticated features such as video streaming and IoT. Our solutions will include applications with high quality video, interactive games with minimal latency and IoT devices for remote control. We will actively leverage the power of 5G to develop more sophisticated and interactive products focused on minimising response time and improving user experience.

What do you consider your important competitive advantage?

Our analysts work closely with clients to find potential weaknesses and misconceptions, strengthen logic and avoid dead ends. This approach gives my company a high reputation and trust from clients. In addition, our narrow profile and specialisation allows us to be the best in our field and offer clients the most progressive solutions in the industry. When creating medical applications, we take great care to ensure that our experts are aware of medical industry norms and standards, terminology and business specifics.

What are your plans for the company’s development and expansion in the coming years?

We will use advanced technologies to create more competitive products and effectively solve customers’ problems. We are focusing on increasing personalisation, trying to increase user engagement and offer new ways of interacting with products. We will also continue to work on mobile and web applications not related to MedTech, in line with changing trends and with an innovative approach.