Software testing and quality assurance have grown in critical importance for companies. Over the few years, it has established itself as a formidable career choice which is unlikely to stop anytime soon. Now as the name implies, quality insurance is all about maintaining “high quality” on a constant basis. And it isn’t surprising at all to see the concept making its way to the core of several industry verticals including the healthcare.
Quality monitoring is gaining momentum for purchasers, patients, and providers who strive hard to evaluate the value of health care expenditures. Over the past decade, science has evolved in regards to quality measurement despite a few challenges that might be a counterforce to the demands of cost containment. Well, the following post explores those crucial challenges that must be addressed in the Healthcare sector. But before that let’s take a bit of a detour which will eventually lead us to the answer.
Why the healthcare sector needs QA and testing
Speed and quality are one of the core essentials that tend to serve the healthcare industry more efficiently leading to a significant amount of inventions and advancements. One of the best examples showing how digitalization is becoming more capable of transforming the industry is that more and more number of people and devices are found connected to deliver meaningful interference from the data generated.
Technology is the best support system where different kinds of applications are created to deliver best services even at a distant. A sudden increase is found in the growth of healthcare products such as wearables, followed by applications especially the ones being associated with them. It may quite interest you to know that these can be termed as products featuring a big market and will continue to have a tremendous impact on the economy even in the upcoming years. Down below I would like to mention a few reasons stating why QA testing tools and testing are crucial in the healthcare industry.
#1 Big Data Testing in Healthcare: Because of being well associated with tons of information related to their patient’s health conditions, the healthcare industry is believed to be one of the most highly data-intensive sector. Several healthcare institutions and the associated segments to devise the right strategy building the right and relevant kind of products. Initially invented to derive the right interferences and the data point big data testing also helps in making certain decisions in regards to drug inventions, disease cure, and the last but not the least research and development. These decisions are some of the best and informed ones that anyone could take.
#2 Security of applications: I am sure you will agree with me when I say that healthcare websites have the most sensitive kind of the data about their patients and their health-related information. By security testing and penetration testing, we can make the websites, as well as applications, hack proof and sustainable especially in challenging a digital scenario. It is very important to conduct quality assurance and testing to ensure security to all such applications.
#3 Usability testing in healthcare: Usability testing is the most required in the health care industry. However, there are various features and the user scenarios that a pharmacist or a nurse can continue to face during their working hours. Do you think these tasks are of prime importance? Absolutely not! In fact, they can be eased with the help of automation, adding in more number of features that will help to simplify the entire process.
QA Challenges in Healthcare Apps
Healthcare industry has also started to introduce mobile platforms across the care delivery cycle, creating a voluminous medical app market. Further, we have extracted a few QA challenges concerning testing and healthcare mobile apps and how to get over them.
Challenge #1 Users and their expectations
Software usability has been a core element in the healthcare industry. Look at those EHR systems; it is very important to come up with something that not just offers accurate physical records but also aggregate physical activity recommendations with nutrition tracking. While testing a mhealth app, thinks about situations which patients may need it. During critical cases, older patients can make the most of condition management app that aids well in finding what their actual condition is and tap the emergency call button at an extreme point.
In addition to this, healthcare mobile apps have the potential to influence the stakeholders this includes patients, caregivers, care team members, administrative staff, insurers and more. The app should adequately support their workflows, so QA specialists need to get a good picture of basic user needs. Let’s say for example if the patient likes to connect his or her smartwatch to the app to monitor heart rate while exercising or if a physician would like to review his patient’s treatment plan progress remotely.
Damo Consulting, a healthcare growth and digital transformation advisory firm based in Chicago, recently released its third annual Healthcare IT Demand Survey report. The report indicates technology vendors will continue to struggle with long sales cycles as they aggressively market digital and AI. For the second year in a row, the rise of non-traditional players, such as Amazon and Google, will have a strong impact on the competitive environment among technology vendors while EHR vendors grow in dominance.
Top spending priorities for healthcare executives are digital, advanced analytics and AI. However, spending on EHR systems will dominate technology spending budget in 2019. Healthcare executives continue to be confused by the buzz around AI and digital and struggle to make sense of the changing landscape of who is playing what role and the blurred lines of capabilities and competition.
“Digital and AI are emerging as critical areas for technology spend among healthcare enterprises in 2019. However, healthcare executives are realistic around their technology needs vs. their need to improve care delivery. They find the currently available digital health solutions in the market are not very mature,” says Paddy Padmanabhan, CEO Damo Consulting. “However, they are also more upbeat about the overall IT spend growth than their technology vendors.”
The top spending priorities for healthcare executives are digital, advanced analytics, and AI. EHR systems will dominate technology spending budgets, even as the focus turns to digital analytics.
IT budgets are expected to grow by 20% or more. Healthcare executives are more upbeat about IT spend growth than vendors.
Healthcare executives say they are confused by the buzz around AI and digital. They are also struggling to make sense of the changing landscape of who is playing what role and the blurred lines of capabilities and competition.
Cybersecurity issues are a challenge for 2019 in the healthcare sector, but not the biggest driver of technology spending or the top area of focus for health systems in 2019.
The CIO remains the most important buyer for technology vendors, however IT budgets are now sitting with multiple stakeholders.
The biggest challenge for technology vendors is long cycles, along with product/service differentiation and brand visibility.
The rise of non-traditional players, such as Amazon, Apple, and Google will have a strong impact on the competitive healthcare technology environment. Deeply entrenched EHR vendors such as Epic and Cerner will grow in dominance.
Researchers are constantly working on innovative approaches to deal with treatment resistant depression. This offers hope to those who have been unable to deal with their illness successfully using traditional methods. However, some of these novel approaches are only available to people suffering from depression through research studies.
Here’s a quick look at some of the advances currently being made in this area.
Transcranial magnetic stimulation
TMS, or Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation, is a technique that sends bursts of energy that are produced by electromagnets to specific parts of the brain. This is a treatment that’s thought to affect the communication of the nerve cells that play an active role in depression. Because this is something that must be done in a doctor’s office, some people might ask: “Does TMS require anesthesia?” It doesn’t, and is said to be painless and has very few side effects and risks.
Moodivator
This is an app that was created by Pfizer that helps people with some of the key elements of the treatment of depression. It helps by allowing people to set goals, track their mood, and share their results with their doctors. That being said, you don’t need to be in treatment with a doctor for depression for you to use it. Currently, Moodivator is only available for iPhone users.
Magnetic seizure therapy
Magnetic Seizure Therapy is a procedure that’s experimental at the moment. It utilizes magnetic fields in order to induce a seizure (a controlled one) inside the brain. The effects are purported to be similar to those that are inherent with ECT. While doctors and researchers still don’t understand why, the seizures that are induced can rapidly reduce the symptoms of depression. This treatment does require a hospital stay because you need to be anesthetized for the procedure.
By Dr. Giovanni Colella, CEO and co-founder, OODA Health.
Giovanni Colella, MD
2018 was another year of rapid changes in the healthcare industry. Over the past twelve months, I’ve had fascinating conversations with executives in the provider and payer community and they have described the challenges they face and their visions for the future. One thing has become clear among everyone in the healthcare ecosystem: expectations are changing.
Patients are looking for a retail-like experience for their treatment, and sure enough, a number of new, innovative providers are gaining traction by leading with convenience and patient-centricity. Patients are embracing alternatives to the traditional doctor’s office or the local hospital. Unwilling to wait for an appointment, patients are eager for more responsive, high-quality treatment options.
Healthcare providers are becoming more innovative in an effort to improve the quality and efficiency of patient care while continuing to look for ways to reduce costs. Payers are exploring new approaches to improve their back-office systems and are willing to partner with third-party vendors to accelerate this improvement, rather than trying to develop everything in-house.
I am confident that this year will be full of important change in the industry and that these changes will touch the lives of millions. Of course, there is still a long way to go since the healthcare industry is historically slow to embrace change – it is often difficult to break through a culture that normally stays with the status quo. However, the desire for change is definitely there. If I were to list my top three predictions for trends in healthcare in 2019, they would include the following:
1) Health plans will get much more serious about improving member experience and predictability.
Health plans are eager to improve their member experience, partially because of the emergence of new consumer-centric plan models. As the market becomes more competitive with new entrants, traditional health plans will continue to partner with agile startups to deliver an improved member experience. These partnerships will enable health plans and startups to pilot projects and scale them quickly, leveraging the strengths of both organizations.
2) Employers are focusing on providing access to targeted healthcare solutions that meet specific therapeutic needs.
As of 2018, 83 percent of employees say healthcare is very or extremely important to/for staying in a job or changing a job. Given the importance of healthcare to their employees, and that the average company spends $10,000 on healthcare annually for each worker, employers will recognize the need to invest in specific solutions in areas where traditional networks fall short. These include programs for infertility, women’s health and behavioral health.
Data is the future of healthcare, especially when it’s combined with new technologies like artificial intelligence and machine learning. As we generate more and more healthcare data, we increase the potential for us to discover deep insights that might otherwise have gone undiscovered.
Data analysis can be used to enhance drug discovery by running simulations and identifying areas of potential research. It could also be used to provide a kind of Netflix of healthcare which provides personalized recommendations for every patient based on what’s worked well for other, similar patients.
And of course, it can also be used to improve employee engagement. After all, it’s these front line employees that are interacting with patients and acting as the face of your organisation. An engaged employee can make all of the difference, both to your bottom line and to the patient’s prognosis.
Here are seven tips to help you to get started.
Monitor engagement
You can’t track whether your efforts are having an impact if you’re not tracking employee engagement in the first place. Bernice Winters of XpertWriters.com recommends using 360-degree feedback programs at regular intervals and adds that you can never gather too much data. “Even if you don’t need that data today,” she says, “you never know when you might need it in the future.”
Choose the right metrics
If you try to measure too much, you stretch yourself too thin and spend more time logging the data than acting on what you’ve learned. If you measure too little, you find yourself with insufficient data to make effective decisions. You’ll also want to ask questions that are specific to your business so that you can dig deeper.
Provide data-led training
Edward Laws of CareersBooster.com says that any company that isn’t providing training is failing to invest in its own future. In the healthcare industry, employers have a responsibility to provide training to staff so that they’re providing the best service possible. Data-led solutions can help you to identify weaknesses and to help employees to address them before it’s too late.
It has become clear in the last few years that when it comes to cybercrime, hackers are not fussy about which organization or sector they focus on – if there’s profit to be made, anyone is a potential target.
However, there are of course institutions which will always be of particular desirability to cybercriminals. Financial institutions, banks and retail are among the most targeted because the goal of most cyberattacks is financial gain, and organizations in these industries are the most lucrative targets for cybercriminals. The healthcare sector is also heavily targeted because of the personal data it holds. This data may be stolen and used for different purposes, including fraud. As a consequence, the focus on healthcare institutions by hackers has ramped up in recent years.
This increased attention on the health sector is because of hackers seeing it as an inexhaustible source of money. On multiple occasions, media reports have described leaks of data from medical centers, followed by a ransom demand sent to clinic management and patients.
There are a number of other ways criminals can monetize attacks on healthcare equipment and applications. These include threatening patient health by altering stored information; using stolen data to fraudulently obtain access to medical care or controlled medications; leveraging personal information on patients and their family members; and sabotaging websites and/or infrastructure on behalf of unscrupulous competitors. Attacking healthcare institutions also allows criminals to resell stolen data to third parties such as insurance companies, healthcare providers, banks, and others, who can use this valuable information for a number of purposes (such as advertising, research, or even discrimination based on pre-existing conditions).
One such specific way that criminals can carry out attacks is by exploiting advancements in health technology and equipment in recent years. We’ve seen an increasing number of medical devices such as pacemakers, drug pumps (like insulin infusion devices), implantable defibrillators, and other devices implementing wireless connectivity for doctors to control and fine-tune their work and update firmware. This makes these devices potentially incredibly dangerous for patients. A criminal could research and reverse communication protocols and exploit vulnerabilities in a simple piece of software used in those tiny devices, for example changing the heart rate controlled by pacemakers, injecting incorrect doses of drugs or even making them show the wrong data — leading doctors to the wrong conclusions and causing them to make mistakes in their treatment.
A good set of teeth makes all the difference, not just for the purpose of smiling, but it also has a huge impact on self-esteem and overall confidence. Having broken, missing or unsightly looking teeth makes it hard for people to express themselves effectively and clearly.
As more and more people are realizing the importance of dental health and its impact on their lives, whether at a personal or professional level, an increasing number of people are also deciding to get dentures, dental implants, braces and other dental appliances.
With this in mind, it is not surprising to know that according to the American Academy of Implant Dentistry, the dental implant and prosthetic business in the United States is projected to reach a lucrative estimate of $6.4 billion by the end of 2018.
The dental implant industry has been consistent in making breakthroughs and finding more innovative ways to improve the overall quality and standards of its products. Indeed, the recent developments in dental technology make getting dental implants more and more attractive for consumers. Here are just some of the most recent innovations in the field of implant dentistry.
Computer-designed implants
For every dental implant procedure, the ultimate goal is to have satisfactory bone stability. This is because with the current state of dental technology, crestal bone loss is still an unavoidable result. As a consequence, bone resorption and/or bone loss still poses a threat to successful dental implants, especially to short dental implants.
With this ultimate goal in mind, clinicians and dental practitioners have long researched different approaches that can be taken to avoid bone loss. According to recent studies, a new development is now seeing the light, with dental implants that can encourage zero bone loss with the usage of computer aided design and computer aided manufacturing (CAD-CAM).
This technology aims to create exact duplicates of the missing teeth which can immediately be replaced in the mouth. Once the defective biological tooth comes out, the replica is then placed in the empty space. The best thing about this technology is that it offers patients a symptom-free healing process, which also in turn is advantageous for dentists as it gives them a more effective and efficient way to create dental implants.
Disease and illness are running wild these days and individuals are more aware than ever of the need to make lifestyle changes. There has been an increase in the number of people who are interested in getting educated about their health and ways to improve it. Beyond dieting, exercising, and getting enough sleep, patients are digging deeper to find out what’s going on.
To know what’s going on, one must first have a clear understanding of their family history. While some may know of a few generations and medical histories, many are clueless as to their bloodline and how it can impact their health or efforts to improve. Fortunately, modern technology has made it possible for individuals to have a clearer picture.
DNA tests for family history and its increased accessibility to the average consumers have cultivated a new method for improving health and wellness. With a full breakdown of a person’s genetic makeup, medical providers and private companies are able to learn a lot about an individual and what steps need to be taken to enhance their well-being. Here’s a look at some of the data derived from DNA testing:
Dietary Options – When it comes to eating right, what works for one individual may not work for another. Genetic testing can give patients insight on what they should and shouldn’t be eating. Results can conclude things like how much protein a person should eat, which fats are best, your food sensitivities, nutritional deficiencies, and the types and how much carbs you should be consuming.
Disease Risks – It is believed that there are some genetic components tied to the development of certain diseases like high blood pressure, diabetes, osteoarthritis, cancer, and more. Advanced DNA tests, however, now reveal whether or not a patient is at risk of developing certain diseases based on their genetic coding. This knowledge can help patients to get proactive and start making more efficient changes to their lives to prevent the diseases.
Weight Management – Not every patient is successful in losing weight simply by eating good foods and exercising. For some, there is a genetic link that hinders them. Whether it be the love of sweets, addictive traits, some underlying disease relating to weight, or a family history of obesity, it can be discovered through DNA testing. Armed with this information patients can then make more effective decisions and get support in areas they weren’t aware they needed it to finally shed the pounds and keep them off.
Efficient Medicine – From treating mental illness to life-threatening diseases, doctors rely on modern medicine to help improve the lives of their patients. However, as with most things, what works for one patient may not be as effective for another. DNA testing, however, changes that because they now have a clear picture of their patient’s genetic makeup and how it is impacted by certain medications. This provides healthcare providers with a more accurate means for prescribing the right medication and dosage with fewer side effects and more effective results for their patients.
Thanks to the advancements of modern technology like DNA testing healthcare providers and their patients are equipped with data that can increase the quality of life. Though it is still crucial to be observant, eat right, exercise and take medications as prescribed, the use of such data makes it possible to get more detailed in each category on what will work most effectively for each person. This reduces the risk of disease, enhances treatment options, and reduces the unhealthy state of patient health today.
Software testing and quality assurance have grown in critical importance for companies. Over the few years, it has established itself as a formidable career choice which is unlikely to stop anytime soon. Now as the name implies, quality insurance is all about maintaining “high quality” on a constant basis. And it isn’t surprising at all to see the concept making its way to the core of several industry verticals including the healthcare.
Researchers are constantly working on innovative approaches to deal with treatment resistant depression. This offers hope to those who have been unable to deal with their illness successfully using traditional methods. However, some of these novel approaches are only available to people suffering from depression through research studies.
A good set of teeth makes all the difference, not just for the purpose of smiling, but it also has a huge impact on self-esteem and overall confidence. Having broken, missing or unsightly looking teeth makes it hard for people to express themselves effectively and clearly.
Disease and illness are running wild these days and individuals are more aware than ever of the need to make lifestyle changes. There has been an increase in the number of people who are interested in getting educated about their health and ways to improve it. Beyond dieting, exercising, and getting enough sleep, patients are digging deeper to find out what’s going on.