An Overview of the Challenges in
Healthcare IT Software
The healthcare sector has its own challenges
when it comes to software as does every other industry. Given the critical
nature of the industry, the consequences of lapses are far too great here and
this is the reason behind strict regulatory requirements and heavy penalties. The
software employed for healthcare needs to be precise, helpful and manage to
uphold the security and integrity of data apart from ensuring regulatory
compliance. The major challenges that the healthcare IT software solutions need
to address are:
·
Conform to healthcare reforms -
For example, Meaningful Use
·
HIPPA Compliance and other
major regulatory compliance (FDA norms, etc)
·
Enable mobility to facilitate
remote access Patient Engagement – ease of use, gaining trust and collecting
feedback by means of patient surveys and working on improving the application
·
Analysing clinical data and
facilitating clinical data warehousing
·
Scaling up to the latest
technological innovations
Thus, healthcare IT software industry has a lot
of challenges in its wake. The most important factor to be considered however
is this: how safe is the software to use and will it truly ease the processes
and improve productivity of the staff. Similarly, data integrity and trust
aspects are other worry factors when it comes to healthcare IT software. This
is why Quality Assurance and testing play a key role in such solutions.
Healthcare Software QA –
Evolution and the role it plays in the industry
The critical nature of the software
mandates thorough testing and quality assurance and only these two put together
can ensure smooth functioning of the software and flawless integration. It
takes time for healthcare professionals to trust software and for them to do
so, healthcare software QA is imperative. Testing and QA ensure that the
software is indeed fit to be used for the functionality it was designed for and
also validates business workflows and measures performance. The key factor here
is to employ people with knowledge of the domain to work on testing it so that
functional testing can happen in the true sense and testers understand the
application end to end before testing it.
Top Trends Impacting Healthcare
Software QA
Cloud and SaaS applications are ruling the
roost everywhere these days and healthcare IT software is no exception. Thus,
in testing too, cloud, SaaS and Big Data specific skills are required. Another
recent trend that has caught on is the use of mobile devices and kiosks and
this requires that the software be tested for these platforms as well. Agile methodologies are being employed in
development and testing along with introduction of new testing tools that
improve the efficiency of testing and the documentation of testing practises.
Compliance and end to end testing are other key areas that have witnessed a lot
of advancements in recent years.
Testing and QA has always played a crucial
role in healthcare software and will continue to do so for years to come as is
evident from the amount of resources companies are spending on healthcare
software QA and testing.