A branded app of your own, or a referral into coaching

A white-label fitness app puts your clinic's name on your patients' phones, and with it a licence, developer accounts, programmes to write and messages to answer. A referral partnership with TriageFit sends patients who are ready to train to a coaching service that is already running, costs your clinic nothing to join or run and takes 10% off every payment made through your link. When a patient chooses to share, you can see how their training is going.

By TriageFit · Published

A white-label fitness app is one a vendor builds on its own platform and publishes with your clinic's name and colours, so patients open something that looks like yours. A referral partnership sends the same patients to a coaching service that is already built and staffed. Clinics look at both for the same reason, which is patients who finish their treatment and want to keep training, and the two ask very different things of the practice.

What running a branded app involves

Start with the store listing. Apple's review guidelines turn away an app made from a commercial template unless the business whose content it carries submits it, so a branded listing on the App Store means a developer membership in your clinic's name, renewed every year. The other route Apple allows is a single app from the vendor that hosts many clients inside it, where your patients download the vendor's app and find your clinic in it.

Then there is the licence. Vendors price it in their own ways, so when you compare quotes it is worth pricing in any set-up or branding fee, the monthly charge, and how that charge grows as you add clinicians or patients.

The cost that is easiest to miss is time. Whatever the platform supplies, the programmes inside it are yours to write, assign to each patient and keep current, and the messages patients send come to your team, in the evenings and at weekends as well as between appointments. Someone also has to notice the patients who stop opening it.

The data comes with it too. Health information in an app you run is usually your clinic's to control, with the vendor processing it for you under a contract, and at the end of that contract the vendor deletes or returns the data on your instruction.

What a referral partnership involves

You register at the clinic sign-up page, which takes a few minutes, and your link, your portal and a printable one-pager with the link and a QR code are ready straight away. We verify each practice by hand, and until we have, no patient is asked to share anything with you.

A patient who joins through your link starts with an intake of about thirty minutes, where the injury you treated shapes the programme from the first session. They train in phases our coaches designed, check in once a week with a real coach reading it, and between check-ins the AI coach answers at any hour, with every change to their plan a proposal they confirm. Coaches review the form-check videos they send and answer questions in the group.

Nothing sits on your side to build or keep running. TriageMethod Ltd, registered in Ireland, is the controller for the coaching, and your clinic is a controller only for what your clinicians read when a patient chooses to share.

The two side by side

What it takesA branded appA referral partnership
Setting upA vendor contract, branding and, for a listing of your own, a developer account in your nameA registration form that takes a few minutes
Running itThe licence, a yearly developer membership if the listing is yours, and your team's timeNo fee, and nothing to maintain
The programmesWritten, assigned and updated by your cliniciansBuilt from each patient's intake, in phases our coaches designed
Between appointmentsMessages come to your teamThe AI coach answers at any hour, and a real coach reads the weekly check-in
Patient dataUsually yours to control, with the vendor processing itOurs for the coaching, yours for what your clinicians read
What you seeEverything in the appThe progress summary of each patient who shares
MoneyWhatever you charge patients for it, less the costs above10% off for patients, and a commission where your rules allow one
StoppingThe app goes, and the vendor deletes or returns the dataPatients keep their membership and history

Where a branded app is the right tool

If the job is putting your own exercises in front of patients while you are still treating them, under your name and adjusted at each appointment, software you control does that job, and the partnership runs alongside whatever you already use. The partnership is built for the point where treatment ends and the patient wants a coach for their training. What a patient trains on after discharge sets out that handover, and home exercise adherence after discharge covers how a weekly check-in keeps them at it.

A practice weighing the two

Picture a practice of four physiotherapists whose discharged patients keep asking what to do next. The branded app they priced meant a vendor contract, a developer membership in the practice's name and one of the four giving part of every week to writing programmes and answering messages. They register for the partnership instead and put the one-pager in the discharge pack. A patient finishing rehab for a knee joins through the link, records the knee at intake and gets a programme built around it, with a real coach reading their check-in each week. The patient chose to share, so three months later the practice can see their programme week and their last check-in, and nobody on the team has written a programme or answered a message to get them there.

What it costs and what you can earn

The partnership is free to join and free to run. Your patients pay €50 every 4 weeks or €500 a year, with VAT included, and your link takes 10% off every payment for as long as their membership runs. Your portal shows each sharing patient's progress summary, and a cohort report covers the last twelve months, with figures for any group smaller than five withheld.

A referral commission is there where your professional rules allow one. It starts switched off, and turning it on records your confirmation that it is permitted for you and that you will make any disclosure your rules require. It pays 5% of what each patient actually pays, which is €2.25 a block payment or €29.25 over a year of blocks, and it is held for 30 days, reversed on a refund and paid monthly through Stripe Connect once you reach €20. Extra revenue for clinics works through the numbers, and the referral partnership overview covers the whole arrangement. The clinic page shows what your patients get.

Questions people ask

Will patients know they came to TriageFit through our clinic?
Yes. They join through your link, the discount it gives them runs for as long as their membership does, and their receipts show it as a clinic partner discount. If they choose to share, their progress appears in your portal, where your clinicians can open their summary and print a report.
Do we still need exercise software for patients in treatment?
That depends on how you set exercises during care, and the partnership does not change it. It picks up patients who are ready to train on their own, with a programme built from their intake around the injury you treated, and it runs alongside any software you already use for active treatment.
Who is responsible for patient data in the partnership?
TriageMethod Ltd, registered in Ireland, is the controller for the coaching. Your clinic is a controller for what its clinicians read in the portal when a patient shares, every read is logged with who read what and when, and a patient who turns sharing off leaves your list and your group reports straight away.
What happens if we end the partnership?
Either side can end it by email. Your link, your portal and your clinicians' seats close, your patients keep their membership and their history, and any commission already earned is still paid. The coaching records stay with each patient's membership rather than in a system your clinic has to wind down.

Sources

Read next