Healthcare, Page 22 Category

The advent of healthcare software solutions has been a boon to the healthcare sector! Such intelligent automated software has successfully addressed several operational lapses by medical bodies – erratic decision-making, mixing up of lab test results, medical equipment failures, inadequate employee training, miscommunication, non-adherence to standard safety practices, etc. And, needless to say, modern customers demand accuracy and competence from their healthcare service provider.

The Covid19 pandemic has accelerated the transition to digital technology; as patients, these days avoid visiting medical spaces unless it is absolutely necessary. Today, practices like online doctor consultation, sharing of digital patient records, etc. are becoming the new norm. As such, medical facilities, as well as clinicians, are under tremendous pressure to adopt healthcare IT solutions for digitalizing their functioning and delivering patient-centric services.

Healthcare providers planning to smarten their facility can choose from these two options.

While off-the-shelf solutions may seem to be a hassle-free option to implement, it comes with endless limitations, and hence, customized solutions are in many ways more productive and beneficial in the long run.

This post throws light on every aspect of custom healthcare software development – Benefits, development expenses, and advice on implementation. A quick read will be beneficial for medical providers looking for game-changing software solutions.

The process wherein professional healthcare app developers are hired to design, build, deploy, and maintain bespoke software meant for meeting the requirements of a specific group of end-users, functions, or establishments; is called custom software development. Unlike COTS (commercial off-the-shelf Software), custom software is molded to fulfill a narrowly defined set of prerequisites and personalized based on the hospital’s area of implementation. COTS, a more generalized solution, aims at fulfilling a wider range of requirements and is usually commercially marketed, packaged, and distributed.

Medical bodies differ greatly regarding their business objectives, arenas of operation, approaches, processes, patient care/operational methodologies, and tools/technologies used. Nevertheless, custom solutions are tailored as per the specifications and clients’ requirements concerning the design, functions, interoperability, scalability, integration, etc. As such, these products cater to the diverse requirements of different organizations and also make room for digital automation. Also, tailor-made products adapt easily to the existing medical processes and equipment, without the need for special adjustments. This saves quite a lot of time and effort for the client as well as the custom healthcare software development company.

Off-the-shelf software, contrarily, is a product with a “one-size-fits-all” approach. Hence, a great deal of time has to be devoted to weeding out the unnecessary features, familiarizing the hospital staff with its functionalities, making it interoperable with the existing set-up, and figuring out how to optimize its generic features for satisfying the basic needs of the medical facility.

Custom software has been crafted considering the particular purpose and specific outcome expected out of it. So, there exists an additional layer of smooth performance that makes such solutions immensely efficient and user-friendly. Furthermore, Bespoke software digitalizes the existing hospital setup by employing automation, avant-garde technologies, and highly advanced systems. This way, even trivial processes like data storage, management of patients’ appointments, etc. can be revamped, thereby elevating healthcare standards. These result in advanced diagnoses/treatment, effective management of operations, and reduced time.

Apparently, the development and implementation of custom software solutions may seem costlier and this ideology holds true for short-term goals. But, for organizations with long-term objectives, the custom approach will fetch a higher ROI. Additionally, using customized products, medical bodies need not bother about licensing hassles that are associated with the adoption of commercial end-products.

Commercial software solutions, being generic in nature, are the soft target of hackers, whereas software solutions designed for a particular organization/brand are far less likely to be targeted by hackers as there is an additional layer of security.

Besides, tailor-made solutions strictly adhere to the regulations and compliances defined by industry standards for ensuring the security and confidentiality of personal healthcare data.

It’s beneficial as well as profitable to outsource custom healthcare software development rather than engage your in-house team for executing this task. Let’s have a look at the reasons.

Outsourcing will allow you to choose from a huge pool of talented and experienced professionals around the globe, as per your project needs. Offshoring will provide you with those specialists who are essential for healthcare app development concerning specific domains and a wider range of skillsets that may not be present within your in-house team.

Outsourcing healthcare app development projects to an experienced IT agency will enable you to cut down on expenses. This is because you need not spend on the establishment of the necessary development infrastructure, recruitment of workforce, training those recruits, deployment, and pre-installation set-up. The software service providers who already have the required infrastructure, as well as advanced technologies will be in accordance with your budget.

Offshore developers are qualified, proficient, and experienced enough to architect your application without the need for additional briefings and training sessions from your end. As such, you can focus your attention on creating crucial hospital resources and improving the core medical services for better productivity, instead of wasting time and effort in refreshing/developing the skillsets of your in-house employees.

Medical service providers find it challenging to alter the technology for improving the project scope or scale their entire team whenever the need arises. However, outsourcing development tasks solves this issue by adding more flexibility – you can collaborate with those professionals who fulfill your criteria and select as per your scaling requirements.

Hiring adept healthcare mobile app development services comes with a price and budget-friendly options often result in compromising on the quality. The developer charges vary as per the country/location; yet, outsourcing can save you approximately 40-70% of the overall expenses incurred in developing and installing tailor-made software. The average hourly developer charges range between 65$ and 130$ in the U.S.A, and between 20$ and 45$ in Asia and Africa. The favorite outsourcing location for healthcare providers in the Asian countries as this region offers talented professionals at affordable rates.

Consider the following aspects before finalizing a remote software development team.

Custom software development enables one to build versatile, appealing, and highly performant healthcare software that can benefit your medical facility by improving portability, accessibility, scalability, and productivity. All you need to do is hire proficient medical software service providers who are well versed with the latest technologies, regulatory compliances, security needs, interoperability, etc. Biz4Solutions, a distinguished healthcare software development firm, with over 10 years of experience, would be a perfect pick in this regard

The modern era of digitalization has brought about transformative changes in the healthcare sector. Global spending on healthcare services is on the rise, a bright future awaits this industry for sure! Healthcare service providers are hiring Healthcare App Development Companies and freelance Healthcare App Developers and leveraging advanced technologies to deliver premium-quality services to their patients. Advanced healthcare mobility solutions are helping the users to actively track their basic health statistics like tracking their heart rate, checking their blood glucose/ BMI level, availing online doctor consultation services via the app, appointment booking, etc. Moreover, both patients and practitioners can access electronic Health Records/electronic medical records whenever required.

But, despite the convenience quotient of using digital healthcare services via an app, data security happens to be one of the greatest concerns of the healthcare industry. These medical apps are susceptible to data breaches, hacking, cyber-attacks, etc. which can pose a risk to the sensitive medical data of patients, causing massive losses to medical facilities. Therefore, healthcare organizations should be more vigilant of their software and cyber-security practices. For avoiding theft, misuse, and fraud of the patients’ data, healthcare applications that have patient’s sensitive data have to be HIPAA compliant and strictly adhere to the HIPAA rules and regulations in the US

HIPAA refers to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act and is issued by federal regulators. This Act mandates a set of safety and privacy standards to protect the confidentiality and availability of medical records and sensitive patient information. Initially, the purpose of introducing this act was to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the medical organizations in the U.S. With time, several rules were added to the Act to protect the individually identifiable health information commonly known as Protected Health Information (PHI). These rules influence the functioning and security protocol of healthcare mobile applications.

The entities covered under the HIPAA Act are health plans, healthcare clearinghouses, and healthcare providers that use electronic media for transmitting data such as health claims, coordination of benefits, referral authorizations, etc. These entities may comprise small/large organizations, institutions, research centers, individual practitioners, and even government agencies.

Adhering to HIPAA for data privacy is federally mandated for healthcare facilities and other Healthcare IT service providers such as healthcare mobile app development services and mHealth development services. So, let’s understand why HIPAA compliance plays a major role in protecting data privacy in Healthcare Applications.

The importance of capturing data has risen over the years to improve the overall healthcare operations, using advanced technologies like the Internet of Things (IoT), RFID technology Robotic Process Automation (RPA), Chatbots, etc. The personal information of patients, their contact details, and medical reports are recorded and saved digitally by several hospital bodies. As such, maintaining data privacy is important to ensure that only the relevant information is shared with the right set of people and at the proper time. This strategy helps providers to build trust amongst the patients.

HIPAA compliant apps abide by strict rules to ensure data security and privacy. These apps are hosted on HIPAA-compliant servers to ensure that all the HIPAA standards are fulfilled correctly. They have to display a link in the privacy policy of the mobile app, while the users download the app. The apps take consent from the patients/users before storing their information. Furthermore, the users are informed about how their data will be used.

Data breaches can lead to disastrous consequences for patients, hospitals as well as healthcare facilities. Fraudulent insurance claims, extortion, or identity thefts are likely, and once this data is hacked/lost, it can be devastating for both patients and medical providers. So, it is essential to secure patient data stored in electronic medical record systems, data concerning the hospital workforce, or other back-office data.

A HIPAA compliant mobile app solution ensures the safety and privacy of healthcare data. The medical app users can access the data only through a secure login procedure. Additionally, two-factor authentications are applied for more security and all data presented in the app can be only accessed using a secure PHI key. Besides, in case the mobile device is lost or stolen, personal user information cannot be accessed easily owing to the advanced security standards and encryption. Data stored on database servers are also encrypted to prevent easy access to healthcare data.

In many large Healthcare Organizations with multiple branches, the medical data needs to be shared with several doctors or concerned authorities. If such hospitals use a mobile app for data transmission, it must be as per HIPAA rules and regulations. Moreover, hospital bodies should audit data from time to time for ensuring that the user data in the app isn’t accessed inappropriately or modified abruptly. Furthermore, in the case of remote monitoring of patients using wearable technology, like IoT or AI; only the required data will be transferred to ensure the security of data. For this reason, the communication networks of the apps possess integrity control mechanisms.

A HIPAA compliant software solution ensures that the amount of sensitive data stored in them has access limitations when the device is carried outside the hospital premises. Additionally, when users delete these apps, any related health data is deleted completely from their device. Remember that HIPAA laws apply only to the apps using PHI i.e. protected health information. Therefore, the data transferred from an app that does not deal with personally identifiable information need not be protected under HIPAA guidelines.

Today, there is a high possibility of sensitive Healthcare data getting fraudulently accessed by hackers. However, if the Healthcare app is HIPAA compliant, it needs to notify affected individuals about the breach of data without unreasonable delay and this notification should not be sent later than 60 days. This policy is mandatory for all apps that are adhering to HIPAA Compliance to abide by data breach notification laws. As per these laws, eligible data breaches are obliged to alert the users or relevant parties.

Some of the data breaches may not cause serious repercussions to medical facilities. In case any disclosure of information, unauthorized access to it, or loss of personal information is bound to cause serious damage, then such breaches are known as eligible data breaches. They can cause financial losses or even damage the reputation of the medical organization. So, the mobile app they employ should be HIPAA compliant and should send prompt notifications to users.

Today, data is the biggest asset for any industry vertical, and healthcare bodies are no exception to it. Today, most hospitals implement diverse innovative digital technologies to deliver improved services to their patients. However, the medical data handled by apps are vulnerable to security and privacy threats. In order to protect this data, these digital healthcare apps must follow the HIPAA guidelines. As per HIPAA compliance, the covered entities need to administer physical, technical as well as administrative safeguards for PHI in place for ensuring privacy, integrity, confidentiality, and security of healthcare data. Therefore, while hiring a Healthcare app Development Company for tailoring an outstanding app for your medical facility, you must necessarily follow the standard HIPAA regulations.