The global mobile medical health care market has a great potential to change the whole medical industry. The global mHealth apps market size has been valued at $38.2 billion in 2021. Currently, North America dominates the market for mHealth and accounts for the largest revenue share of 38.2% in 2021. The global market is expected to expand at a CAGR of 11.8% from 2022 to 2030. The growing market and adoption of fitness devices and medical record software and applications that collect and track fitness data using smartphones are major causes that are driving this industry.

 Source: Grand View Research

Rapid smartphone penetration and widespread 4G technology globally are also expected to drive the mhealth application development up like a bull. Additionally, many governments during the pandemic launched mobile health applications to manage COVID-19. Such applications are also boosting the market growth in these regions over the years. For example, in April 2020, India launched the Arogya Setu app to track the COVID 19 cases across India.

Healthcare application development is observing a global surge now. While developing these apps it is important to be cautious about the programming language. A good language for custom healthcare applications will ensure the effortless functioning of the app.

Read More: Top 10 Most Popular Healthcare Applications Examples

The article covers some of the best programming languages for healthcare software development. 

The Best Programming Language for Medical Application Development

Each programming language has its own features and significance. The choice of a programming language for a healthcare app development would depend upon the need, design, and infrastructure of the application. Healthcare app development company specialise in multiple programming languages. They have the expertise to analyse and decide the best language for the app.

Let us now dive into the languages in detail.

  1. Java
    • It is one of the most widely preferred programming languages. As per CodinGame Developer Survey 2021, nearly 60% of companies have demand for Java and Java developers globally. Most of the major web applications and games have been built on Java. Java is a very robust, easy-to-use, secure, cross-platform, and robust language. These capabilities make it a good choice for healthcare apps, especially for Electronic Health Record (EHR) systems.
  1. Python
    • Python is one of the fastest-growing programming languages in the medical mobile app development industry. It is used for different purposes such as mobile app development, game development, Internet of Things (IoT), data science and machine learning, etc. It is a very easy to learn language that is free of complex syntaxes. Python is a versatile language and can be used on any platform. Coding in Python is relatively easy as compared to other languages and takes less time in bug fixes.
  1. R
    • R is known as the “lingua franca of statistics” as it was primarily designed for statistical computing of data. R is adopted as a language of choice whenever the objective is efficient analyses of data. It is an open-source language with an excellent ability to design a good user interface (UI). The visual representation of data is important when it comes to ensuring the UI of your custom healthcare app platforms.
  1. Kotlin
    • Kotlin is a relatively new Android language. Many experts believe that it will replace Java at some point in time in the future. When it is about creating Android-based mhealth app development solutions, choose Kotlin over any other language as it carries the capabilities that even Java misses out on.
    • Kotlin is an evolving language though its community is small as of now. It is one of the easiest languages which is compatible with the Java ecosystem.
  1. PHP
    • PHP is an open-source programming language mainly used for web development. Many famous websites such as Facebook, Yahoo, Flickr, Tumblr, etc have been coded using PHP.
    • More recently mhealth app developers are also using it for coding mobile applications based on iOS and Android.
  1. SQL
    • SQL or Standard Query Language is used to interact and manage the database. It organises the data systematically into rows and columns of a table. Using queries, modifying data, adjusting records makes SQL a critical requirement for healthcare application development. It helps the administrators of the health care applications to maintain and analyse the stored databases and carry out audits easily.
  1. HTML
    • The language is specifically used for building websites. HTML is a markup language, which means that it is used for formatting the appearance of information on a website. Various health care enterprises like hospitals use websites based on HTML to acquire new patients, market their service, and book appointments for a particular doctor. 
  1. C
    • Some healthcare institutions still use old operating systems which use LINUX or UNIX. In these cases, C can be used for the application development of health care systems. It is known as the mother of all programming languages. It is capable of supporting multiple features of both low-level and high-level languages. 
  1. Swift
    • Swift is a young but promising language. It provides concise and cleaner codes and requires very few lines of code for completing a task. The language is secure and easy to fix. It has an optimised compiler for quick bug fixes. It is very friendly to developers and can be used to programme any custom healthcare app.
  1. C++
    • C++ is a general-purpose language created as an extension of the C programming language. It can be used by the mhealth app developers to programme the internal functioning of major medical devices such as imaging systems. It is also used to provide backend coding assistance to various Electronic Health Records (EHR) and different types of medical information systems. 

Read More: Why use Python in Healthcare Application

Conclusion

The medical application development sector is growing at a rapid pace. Such is the scope of the sector that numerous developers and enterprises specifically specialise in health application development and web development. 

When it finally comes to the development of healthcare web or mobile applications, one of the most important choices is deciding the programming language. No language is perfect in an absolute sense. The choice of the language depends on the requirement and the technique and efficiency of the developers.

If you are looking for a professional medical app development company or need any consultation, Contact BoTree Technologies for Free Consultation.