In 2020, an average software data breach cost U.S. medical businesses .64 million . Failure to establish app interoperability may cost such companies more than billion . Finally, poor performance can turn 53% of users from your medical website. How can you avoid such losses?
Healthcare application testing becomes a solution to these and many other problems. QA specialists help you detect and fix the most significant vulnerabilities of your software. Therefore, you will launch a secure, efficient, and user-friendly product that brings real value in patient care services.
Do you need more detail on QA healthcare services? Check our new material to understand the value and the essentials of software testing in healthcare domain.
Why Should You Implement Quality Assurance in Medicine?
A minor technical issue can turn a client away from your product. However, in the healthcare industry, the outcomes of such problems are even more significant, as the price of a mistake can be a patient's health. Surely medical software faults do not necessarily ruin the entire process of patient care. However, they may be damaging to healthcare businesses in many other ways. Here are the most common medical software implementation issues:
- Failure to comply with ONC or CMS-initiated medical interoperability regulations that prevents businesses from participating in profitable insurance programs;
- Security breaches that can lead to significant fines under HIPAA compliance requirements;
- Medical data glitches leading practitioners to fault decisions;
- Data inconsistencies that delay the release of new software or disrupt work of the existing applications;
- UI/UX design issues that make an app inconvenient for its users;
- Situations when your software runs differently on distinctive devices or operating systems;
- Issues with medical device software connectivity, which disrupt patient monitoring.
To avoid such problems and provide the highest quality of care, focus on healthcare software testing. Quality assurance in healthcare includes compliance testing, app performance analysis, security testing, and many more. While implementing this stage of medical app development, you secure your business from many reputation threats, non-compliance fines, and even liability. Here are some stats that highlight the importance of medical device testing and quality assurance in medicine.
What does healthcare domain testing imply? Check out the next chapter for the answer.
Quality Assurance in Healthcare: 5 Essential Considerations
There is no universal pattern for QA medical services. Phases of medical software testing completely depend on software requirements and may differ from project to project. Besides, such demands determine the tech stack required for quality assurance in healthcare. In some projects, QA specialists manually review an app with tools like Postman and Apache JMeter . Meanwhile, other healthcare software testing tasks require using automation software, such as Jest .
Even though medical software testing is very diverse, there are some essential app features you must review to deliver a quality medical product. Let’s proceed with the most valuable considerations of healthcare testing.
1. Security and Compliance Testing
The medical technology industry is shaped by diverse regulations, such as HIPAA . According to HIPAA rules , a healthcare provider takes responsibility for private health information (PHI) stored in their medical software. Even minor app vulnerabilities can lead to massive data leaks. Meanwhile, businesses that fail to secure PHI can be fined up to .5 million or face liability.
Healthcare testing is the right solution for securing your medical software from data leaks. Automated medical software testing will help you determine whether all app endpoints are fortified with authorization and access permissions. In addition, healthcare application testing specialists determine whether your software keeps up with the Transport Layer Security (TLS) . The latter is a common protocol established to encrypt the communication between web applications and servers.
If you build an AWS-based healthcare app, you can use numerous tools from the AWS tech stack for healthcare testing. For example, you can create specific software rules with AWS Config . After that, AWS will automatically check your software for compliance with these rules. Another relevant for quality assurance in healthcare AWS tool is IAM Access Analyzer . It allows you to detect and delete odd software permissions that make your app more vulnerable.
2. UI/UX Healthcare Application Testing
Even if your product runs well and has no security or connectivity issues, a poor UI/UX design can ruin everything. This problem is especially relevant in the medical industry. Many of its clients are senior citizens that are often uncomfortable with using new technologies. Therefore, to make your patient app work efficiently, you should create an intuitive design devoid of any user inconveniences. UI/UX healthcare testing helps you determine any challenges the users can encounter while navigating your application.
UI/UX healthcare IT testing can be roughly divided into two stages. The first one is static healthcare application testing. It involves a general review of a non-dynamic app design created with Figma or a similar platform. At this stage, QA specialists review whether the app’s design fits user requirements and its business logic. The next phase of software testing in the medical industry involves dynamic review. Here you get an opportunity to see how your app design deals with various requests and runs in dynamic conditions.
There are numerous approaches to design healthcare application testing. Here are the most popular ones.
In sum, design healthcare testing helps you develop a highly usable application that suits a broad range of clients.
3. Medical Device Testing
IoT systems have become an integral part of the medical industry. Practitioners rely on them so much that an IoT system fault can disrupt the entire process of care. Focus on medical device software testing as the right way to secure your IoT systems from data inconsistencies and other problems.
An app sees a device but cannot connect to it? A wearable is connected to the system but fails to communicate data? Medical device testing brings solutions to all such problems and many more.
At this stage of software testing in healthcare domain, you will review the work and the connectivity of medical device databases. A tried and trusted solution is to apply InfluxDB , an open-source time-series database that empowers building IoT systems. QA specialists review the implementation of this database at the stage of medical device software testing. Hence, they ensure that no medical device data is lost.
4. Interoperability Healthcare IT Testing
Interoperability gains momentum in healthcare. As medical systems grow bigger and more complex, their connectivity and smooth data exchange become vital. Major industry influencers, such as ONC and CMSs introduce provisions facilitating the development of healthcare interoperability. Meanwhile, the failure to comply with such regulations can prevent your business from participating in insurance programs bringing attractive incentives. For many companies, it is the main reason to remember about the importance of quality assurance in healthcare.
Healthcare software testing helps you indicate any issues disrupting the interoperability of your apps and platforms. QA specialists use manual requests to check your software’s data exchange instances and review them for compatibility with the FHIR standard. In addition, a medical software testing specialist apply different testing scenarios to examine your app's connectivity with various third-party services. After reviewing the interoperability of medical software solutions, you will be able to make the most complex healthcare IT systems run smoothly.
5. Performance Testing
Performance review is one of the most important phases of software testing. When it comes to healthcare, where speed and efficiency are a must, performance medical software testing is vital. It is the right way to determine any glitches that disrupt the app's work. Besides, performance healthcare IT testing helps determine whether an app complies with the essential productivity requirements. The key point is to understand how such variables as location, device, connection quality, or the number of simultaneous users affect the app's speed. This helps developers build highly scalable apps that run smoothly regardless of conditions or data loads.
Typically, performance healthcare testing is arranged according to different scenarios. Functional behavior review tools, such as Apache JMeter , measure the app's productivity in different conditions. Besides, QA specialists use manual testing software, such as Postman , to create requests sent to the app endpoints or connected third-party services. Such requests emulate different data loads, operating systems, and other variables affecting software performance. Hence, such medical software testing helps you determine situations in which your app may struggle to work properly.
Final Thoughts
A clear understanding of healthcare domain testing essentials and the importance of quality assurance in healthcare matter a lot. Unfortunately, it is nothing without QA medical specialists that can review your app and determine all its vulnerabilities. The best solution is to outsource medical software testing to reputable software engineering professionals.
That is when Binariks QA medical testers come into action. We have solid expertise in developing and testing healthcare software. For example, our healthcare domain testing specialists reviewed the quality of a primary care platform designed for remote patient monitoring. We thoroughly examined its interoperability with third-party services and eliminated any issues pertaining to medical device connectivity. Our healthcare software testing specialists also fortified the application to comply with HIPAA rules. Check our case study to get more information on this project. Make sure to review our portfolio for more information about our QA medical expertise.
Contact us if you want dependable professionals to handle your healthcare domain testing. Remember that there is no place for faults and vulnerabilities in medical software development.