The Need for Healthcare Software Quality Assurance

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.