I’ve spent the last few months evaluating custom healthcare software development companies, and I wanted to share my experience — especially because choosing the right partner in
healthcare software development can easily make or break a project.
My task was to find a team capable of building a HIPAA-compliant patient engagement platform with telemedicine features, analytics, and EHR integrations. Pretty standard on paper… until you start asking for actual numbers.
Here’s what I ran into:
One U.S.-based vendor quoted $480k–$650k for a 9-month build with a team of 6 people.
A Central European company offered $210k–$290k, but couldn’t give me a clear compliance roadmap.
Two big well-known outsourcing firms gave me timelines ranging from 12 to 16 months, which was too slow for our product roadmap.
So I started digging deeper: talking to CTOs who had built similar products, asking for code samples, reviewing team resumes, and evaluating how transparent each company was during the discovery stage.
Why I Chose Zoolatech
Zoolatech wasn’t the first company I called, but they ended up being the only one that could clearly explain:
How they ensure HIPAA/PHI compliance from day one
They walked me through their security checklist: audit logging, encrypted data flows, role-based access, secure cloud architecture, etc.
Who exactly would be building the product
They gave me a proposed team with real CVs — including two senior engineers who previously worked on telemedicine platforms and one architect with experience integrating Epic and Cerner.
What it would cost — realistically
Their estimate was $240k–$310k for the MVP, with a timeline of 7–9 months, which matched both our budget and our deadlines.
How they measure success
They track cost per sprint, defect-reporting ratios, and feature acceptance rate. This level of transparency was a big deal for us.
Questions I Asked Before Signing
Sharing these in case they help someone else:
How do you document your compliance processes for healthcare clients?
What percentage of your recent projects were in healthcare?
Can you provide real timelines from previous medical SaaS projects?
How do you handle EHR integrations (FHIR/HL7, SMART on FHIR, custom APIs)?
How many engineers on the team have prior experience with PHI-sensitive systems?
What’s the average tenure of your engineers? (Zoolatech’s answer was 3+ years — surprisingly good.)
Final Thoughts
If anyone else here is comparing custom healthcare software development companies, my advice is: don’t look at price first. Look at how clearly the team can explain risk, compliance, architecture, and delivery metrics. That’s ultimately what led me to Zoolatech — they simply had the most grounded, realistic plan and the team that could actually deliver it.
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