Trends of the healthcare software in 2021
The healthcare industry opens innovative technologies to be implemented into medical organizations. We have gathered the top tech trends that have been or are expected to be integrated into healthcare software during the next several years.
Medical Internet of Things (IoT)
The IoT is considered to be a trendy technology that is actively implemented in various industries to enhance their performance. Medical IoT aims to qualitatively connect medical devices of remote patients, internal systems within healthcare organizations, and insurance companies to provide easy and smooth health data exchange and usage.
Employee wellness app
The pandemic keeps the medical workers in suspense for lots of months. It is important to check the wellness of not only patients but medical employees too. Employee wellness apps unite medical workers within one or several healthcare entities where they can chat, share their experience and concerns, do some activities like yoga or dancing, organize corporate retreats, and just relax and free their minds.
ARVR
AR and VR technologies are already in wide use in healthcare today. Thanks to these tech trends, many medical organizations conduct VR surgical training and elective surgeries. Moreover, the VR and AR technologies help investigate patients’ mental health better to provide the most suitable and effective treatment for them.
Artificial Intelligence (AI)
The AI technology allows for deeper analysis of patient’s health conditions and their health data to define the correct diagnosis and prescribe the suitable treatment accurately. AI helps to detect diseases before their appearance, especially diverse infections like cancer.
Software Development Life Cycle For Healthcare
Software development life cycle is the most widespread methodology of developing software applications and managing the processes during the development involves defining the objectives, documenting them, and creating a precise plan of the development team’s actions.. The healthcare industry requires a little bit of a different approach to software development. Thus, a new medical SDLC has been invented and is called Patient Journey modeling. It is a patient-centric approach that helps investigate what patients may need and provide an excellent journey and experience with the healthcare organizations.
The healthcare SDLC aims to deliver top-notch solutions within the defined budget, timelines, and project scope. The main differentiator of this development framework is the full engagement of the medical workers and patients in the development process in order to test it and give feedback if the app corresponds to all their expectations and requirements. Thus, patient journey modeling enhances the efficacy and the use of the delivered medical software solution.
So the software development life cycle for healthcare will approximately look like this:
- The discovery stage is an inevitable part of any type of software solution development; it implies analyzing the healthcare entity and its workflows to define the main objectives for the future solution;
- The prototype development to figure out if the developers are moving in the right direction;
- Designing and coding that includes data encryption which is crucial for health data;
- The testing phase is really vital in the healthcare software development as it has to be well-functioning and eliminate any bug or error;
- The delivery of the solution and smooth integration into the organization’s processes.
What Do Healthcare Software Development Companies Do
Due to the active digitalization of the healthcare industry, a software development company tries to adjust to its specifics by offering niche solutions. Healthcare software development companies look for efficient ways of optimizing the internal workflows of medical facilities with the use of technologies and custom digital tools. Among the most common software services, we would like to mention:
- Ready-made medical software tools – medical apps for internal use that have quite limited functionality and are mostly used for managing several processes like inventory, appointments, etc.
- Healthcare mobile apps – used for transferring data from medical devices to hospitals for providing remote health monitoring
- Custom medical systems – an all-in-one solution that manages all internal and external processes related to a particular medical entity, easy to scale and integrate with new functions.
The main requirement that hospitals have for software companies is a cost reduction strategy that provides high-quality medical services at reasonable prices for patients and facilities as well. These days the variety of software development companies focusing on building healthcare software is surely extended, and the selection becomes more demanding as it is vital to assure that your tech partner is trusted and responsible.
- The Specifics Of Healthcare Software Application Development
Today, people are more obsessed with their mobile apps than laptops or computers. So when building custom software development, it is advisable to think more of the customer journey and provide the mobile app for patients. Thus, patients become participants of the same internal systems which lightens and helps manage many processes like booking appointments, checking the lab tests, enter their health indicators, access to EHRs, connecting the app to the medical wearables, getting notifications about the upcoming visit, or procedures, GPS to find the nearest hospital or doctor and so on.
Commonly there are several types of medical applications that are widely used within medical organizations, and each of them has a different focus. For instance, it can be a doctor who needs to make e-prescriptions, remote monitoring and check the scheduled visits; patients that need to have the same options as doctors and also have access to their medical histories; a hospital needs management of internal operations.
The mobile app should be scalable and easily integrated with the new options needed for patients. The most vital thing about healthcare app development is the design concept. It should be intuitive, simple, and easy to use so that patients of all ages could leverage it for their convenience.