With 200 new mHealth (mobile health) apps launching daily, it’s safe to say that the digital health market is exploding. For health-tech startups and established organizations looking to scale across global markets, the differentiator in a competitive landscape isn’t always the features—it’s the user experience.

Recently, TransPerfect Life Sciences’ digital health experts hosted a webinar breaking down how organizations can build global-ready mobile apps. Below are some of the key points teams can take away as they start their globalization journey.

The Importance of Starting Localization Early

Imagine you're preparing to launch a women’s health app in the Middle East. Once translated, key educational modules break because right-to-left layouts shift icons, cut off symptom descriptions, and misalign consent screens—while several images and terms in the English source are flagged as culturally inappropriate. Fixing these issues requires redesigning multiple components, replacing sensitive content, and reworking layouts, ultimately delaying market entry and raising red flags with local regulators.

This hypothetical scenario is one of the biggest mistakes digital health app teams make: building for English first, then thinking about global markets later. From clinical workflows and regulatory expectations to cultural norms and accessibility considerations, digital health apps are too complex for this. Requirements vary widely depending on the end user’s preferences, health considerations, and local health authority guidelines where it’s operating. Waiting to consider these components until the app is fully built can lead to:

• Slow global readiness
• English text bleeding into localized screens
• Text cutoff due to expansion and contraction
• UX patterns that don’t work in key markets
• Friction with regulators
• Lower adoption and trust

Teams that plan for internationalization (i18n) and localization move faster with fewer expensive rewrites.

How to Localize UI Content to Remove the Bottlenecks

Historically, mobile app localization required manually exporting files (JSON, XML, etc.), hand-prepping the strings, passing files back and forth between linguist and reviewers, taking manual screenshots for review, and multiple rounds of corrections and retesting. It works, but the process is slow, messy, and can easily become a major bottleneck for every update.

That’s why teams are increasingly turning to translation management systems (TMS) to automate everything except the parts that still require human expertise and oversight. With a TMS, files no longer need to be manually exported, content syncs automatically, screenshots auto-generate for linguist review, and updates can be localized continuously. This approach eliminates the repetitive manual work that slows down global mHealth app releases and frees experts to spend time where it matters most: accuracy, context, and quality.

Internationalization (I18n): The Foundation for Going Global

Translation and localization of your mHealth app and its content can only be successful if your product is ready for it. That’s where internationalization comes in.

Designing your app with I18n principles in mind ensures your app can:

• Switch languages seamlessly
• Display in virtually any language with Unicode implemented (accented characters, etc.)
• Expand or contract without breaking the layout
• Support right-to-left languages
• Format dates, numbers, and times correctly
• Swap icons or images to match cultural norms
• Handle multilingual search and input methods

Without these foundations, even perfect translations won’t resonate with users, or worse, fail on screen.

What About Accessibility?

Based on 2023 data from the World Health Organization, more than 1.3 billion people live with significant disabilities. For health apps, baking accessibility into UX/UI design is not optional. Beyond being the ethical thing to do, it’s increasingly a regulatory requirement (ADA, European Accessibility Act, etc.) and determines whether:

• A visually impaired user can navigate your app
• Someone with motor limitations can input data
• A non-English-speaking user can search information in their native script
• All patients can understand health instructions

Accessible design opens the door to new markets for your mHealth app while also building trust and strengthening brand reputation.

Post-Localization Testing

Once the app is localized, the real work begins. Ensuring your app meets quality standards and functions as it’s supposed to is just as important as the translation itself.

There are two key parts of post-localization testing: Contextual Review and Functional Testing.

In contextual review, native linguists review localized screens side-by-side with the English source version to catch any issues created by the translation process. This can range from truncated or overflowing text, to leftover English strings, to contextual mistranslations, to visual or layout breakages.

In functional testing, human testers use real devices (not just emulators) to tap through every button and user path, validate each workflow and data input, and confirm that the localized version behaves exactly like the English build.

When it comes to digital health apps, this level of testing is non-negotiable. A broken workflow could compromise patient safety, regulatory compliance, or clinical data accuracy.

Best Practices When Entering New Markets

To help you navigate taking your mHealth app global, here are a few critical best practices to keep in mind when entering new markets:

• Use region-specific language (e.g., Mexican Spanish vs. “International Spanish”)
• Account for local health behaviors and norms
• Consider cultural sensitivities (e.g., women’s health, mental health, etc.)
• Use imagery that reflects local culture and regulatory guidelines
• Tailor accessibility requirements to each market
• Include human linguistic review alongside AI-assisted workflows

Conclusion

When you’re scaling your digital health app, you must ensure everyone accessing it—whether a patient, provider, or general user—can trust your production in their language, culture, and context. When internationalization, localization, accessibility, and testing work together, organizations move faster and avoid costly rework, delivering experiences that truly resonate.

Interested in discussing your app’s global readiness? TransPerfect’s digital health experts are here to help—get in touch today!