How much does a telehealth app cost to build in Australia?

What are you actually paying for in a telehealth product?

A telehealth product is a booking system, a patient record, a video room and a billing flow joined together, and the video room is the cheapest of the four. Founders often price the video and underestimate the rest. This is what an Australian telehealth product usually needs, and where each line lands:

Component	What it involves	Relative cost
Booking and payments	Practitioner availability, appointment types, reminders, card capture, cancellations	Medium
Intake and consent	Forms before the visit, identity details, consent to telehealth and to any recording	Low to medium
Video	A provider such as Twilio or Daily, or an embedded product such as Coviu; waiting room; join links by SMS or email	Low if embedded or API based
Clinical notes and documents	Notes, referrals, letters, or export to the practice’s existing clinical system	Medium to high
Prescribing	Integration with conformant electronic prescribing software	Medium, plus vendor terms
Medicare and health fund billing	Item numbers, eligibility checks, claiming through a channel the practice already uses	Medium to high
Privacy and security	Access controls, audit logs, data location decisions, breach readiness	Always present
Practitioner app	Schedule, notes and calls on mobile	High if native iOS and Android

If a practice simply needs video consults, it should not build any of this. The question is whether telehealth is a feature of your practice or the service you are selling.

Should you embed Coviu or Healthdirect, or build on a video API?

Use an existing telehealth product when you are a practice adding video; build on a video API when the patient journey itself is your product. Published prices at the time of writing (November 2026):

Option	Published price	Notes
Coviu Individual	$48 a month per user, or $40 on annual billing, ex GST	Waiting area, payment capture, consent forms
Coviu Clinic	$64 a month per clinician, or $54 annual, ex GST	Shared reception, admin users included
Coviu AI Scribe	An extra $79 per clinician	Sold as an add on to any plan
healthdirect Video Call	Provided without cost to general practices, AMS and ACCHOs	Funded by the Australian Government and several states; other practice types may be eligible
Twilio Video API	US$0.004 per participant per minute	Recording and transcription billed separately
Daily Video SDK	10,000 minutes a month included, then per participant minute	Volume discounts published

The arithmetic is telling. A 20 minute consult between a clinician and a patient is 40 participant minutes, or about US$0.16 on Twilio’s published rate. A practice running 1,000 such consults a month spends roughly US$160 on video minutes. The build around the video is what costs real money.

Which Medicare and Medical Board rules change the design?

Medicare GP telehealth generally requires an established clinical relationship, and the Medical Board does not support prescribing without a real time consultation, so both rules shape booking and intake logic. The Department of Health says that to be eligible for GP telehealth services, patients must have had a face to face consultation with their GP, or another GP in the same practice, in the 12 months before the telehealth service, with some limited exceptions. Expanded telehealth became an ongoing part of Medicare on 1 January 2022.

For your software, that means the booking flow needs to know whether a patient is eligible for a bulk billed or rebated telehealth item, and steer ineligible patients to a private fee or an in person visit. Item numbers change, so build the rules as configuration, not code.

The Medical Board of Australia’s telehealth guidelines add three design constraints:

1. No prescribing from forms alone. The Board says prescribing or providing healthcare without a real time direct consultation, in person, by video or by phone, is not good practice and is not supported.
2. Consent for recording. The guidelines expect consent from all participants if a consultation is digitally recorded or uploaded to digital health infrastructure such as My Health Record.
3. Secure records. Doctors should use systems that allow secure access to clinical records and secure transmission and storage of notes, prescriptions, referrals and images.

Allied health and psychology services have their own item rules. Our psychology practice software page covers the session and referral side.

What does electronic prescribing integration involve?

Telehealth products should integrate prescribing software that is already conformant, not build a prescribing engine. The Australian Digital Health Agency publishes an Electronic Prescribing Conformance Register listing software that conforms to the electronic prescribing framework, and says healthcare providers can choose software based on whether it is conformant to legislation. Building and certifying your own would add months and a large compliance budget for little advantage.

Integration usually means launching the prescriber’s conformant clinical software from your consult screen, or using a prescribing partner’s interface, then recording that a script was issued. Allow two to four weeks of engineering plus the time to agree commercial terms with the vendor.

Where does software become a TGA regulated medical device?

Booking, video and records software is generally excluded from TGA regulation, but software that diagnoses, triages or recommends treatment may be a medical device. The TGA says there are currently 15 categories of excluded software in Schedule 1 of the Therapeutic Goods (Excluded Goods) Determination 2018, including communications software, electronic health records, clinical workflow management and patient surveys. If a product meets the medical device definition and is not excluded, it must be included in the ARTG before supply.

AI intake that suggests a likely condition, or a symptom checker that routes patients by risk, needs a regulatory assessment before you scope it. Our page on AI in healthcare covers the TGA position on AI in more depth.

What privacy obligations apply, and what do they cost?

Health service providers must comply with the Australian Privacy Principles regardless of turnover, and NSW adds its own health privacy law, so privacy work is part of the base budget. The OAIC’s small business guidance lists health service providers among the businesses covered even with turnover of $3 million or less. In NSW, the Health Records and Information Privacy Act applies to private sector organisations that provide a health service or collect, hold or use health information.

Practical cost lines in a build:

• Access control and audit logging for every view of a clinical record: typically 5 to 10 days.
• Vendor review of where your video, recording, transcription and email providers store data, and whether that is disclosed in your privacy policy.
• Independent security testing before launch. See our penetration testing cost guide.
• Breach readiness: logs and processes that let you answer what was accessed and by whom. See Notifiable Data Breaches and your software.

How much do typical telehealth builds cost?

Worked at an assumed agency rate of $1,100 to $1,500 a day, telehealth builds run from about $30k for a portal around an embedded video product to $700k or more for a multi specialty platform. The rate assumption reflects Re:Sourced’s July 2026 guide, which puts senior software contractors in Sydney at $800 to $1,100 a day ex GST before agency overheads.

Build	Typical scope	Effort	Cost range (AUD, ex GST)
Branded booking and video portal	Booking, payments, intake and consent forms, embedded video, reminders, notes export	25 to 50 days	$30k to $70k
Telehealth platform	Above, plus practitioner app, clinical notes, prescribing integration, Medicare billing, admin and reporting	110 to 200 days	$120k to $300k
Multi specialty platform	Several services and practitioner types, asynchronous care, AI intake, integrations with clinical systems and pathology	250 to 470+ days	$300k to $700k+

Worked example: an online psychology service with eight clinicians

A hypothetical service wants patients to book, complete intake, pay and join a video session from its own site, with notes exported to its existing practice software. Scope: booking with clinician matching (8 days), intake and consent forms (6 days), payments and receipts (5 days), video rooms on Daily with a waiting room (7 days), notes export (6 days), audit logging and access controls (6 days), testing and security fixes (7 days). That is 45 days, or $49,500 to $67,500 ex GST.

What will it cost over three years?

For a practice adding video, a subscription product is far cheaper over three years; a custom platform only makes sense when the platform is the business. Assumptions, not quotes: the eight clinician service above, 800 sessions a month of 50 minutes with two participants, hosting $3k to $6k a year, maintenance at 15% to 20% of build a year, and US dollar costs converted at an assumed A$1.50.

Option	Year 1	Years 2 and 3	3 year total
Coviu Clinic, 8 clinicians at $54 a month annual	$5.2k	$10.4k	$15.6k
Custom portal on Daily (80,000 participant minutes a month, about US$280 after included minutes at an assumed US$0.004 a minute)	$49.5k to $67.5k build, plus $8k to $11k running	$31k to $49k	$89k to $128k

The custom option costs roughly six to eight times more here. It wins only if the branded journey, matching logic or data ownership is what attracts patients, or if you plan to license the platform to other practices.

How AWLabs approaches telehealth projects

We begin with a Development Consult, then a paid Discovery Audit, credited in full against the build, that checks whether Coviu, Healthdirect Video Call or your existing practice software already covers the need. If custom is justified, we price it as a fixed price Schedule of Work with three options: The Minimum, The Recommended and The Complete. Senior engineers lead every build. We agree hosting location and every data flow with you during discovery, and we build to your clinical governance requirements; responsibility for clinical and regulatory compliance stays with the practice. See our web and mobile app development service, our healthcare industry page and our GP clinic software page.