Reasons Why Healthcare Sector Should Opt For QA Consulting

The Healthcare sector is changing at a significant pace, with technology being the key catalyst of the change. Patients can now consult doctors using the online medium, at least in scenarios where a personal visit is not required. Apart from consultation, remote patient monitoring is one the avenues that is picking up pace.

Remote monitoring of patients has been a big boon in monitoring of COVID-19 patients^[1] and its application is expected to grow multi-fold in the next few years. Digitization, devices, and data are the guiding pillars behind this rapidly changing healthcare sector.

To stay ahead of the curve, CIOs and key decision makers representing the healthcare service providers need to keep a watchful eye on the ‘speed and quality’ aspects of the healthcare delivery.

Whether it is about development of healthcare applications that help serve on-demand consultations or development of a Hardware device that helps remote patient monitoring; Quality is of utmost importance. Healthcare products have to be tested rigorously to ensure that top-quality services are delivered at top-notch speeds.

This is why ‘Quality Assurance’ and ‘Testing’ are considered as high priorities in the healthcare sector. In scenarios where the healthcare providers intend to cut costs (without compromising on the product quality), the best approach is to onboard a QA consulting company (as the QA partner).

Having set the platform, let’s look at the most comprehensive reasons why healthcare sector should invest significantly in QA testing by partnering with a QA consulting expert:

Expertise in Functional Testing

There is a fundamental difference between casual applications (e.g. gaming, shopping, etc.) and healthcare applications. Bugs in the first category of applications leads to a bad user experience but bugs in the second category (i.e. healthcare) of applications can lead to untoward circumstances.

Consider an example of a healthcare application where the admin (or agent) has to login and generate patient’s reports. Severe functional (and/or non-functional) issues create a bad user-experience, which can hamper the further tests of the patient.

An experienced QA consulting vendor like KiwiQA can help in verifying all the business workflows along with testing the application from functional and non-functional aspects. Such an approach helps in shipping a quality healthcare product at a faster pace!

Also Read – Functional and Non-Functional Testing To Improve Software Quality

Expertise in Security Validation

Healthcare records contain a lot of sensitive information about the patients and their health. Any kind of data breach will cause significant damage to the healthcare provider’s brand image. In short, a lot of things are at stake for the patients and the healthcare provider.

This is where security testing and penetration testing becomes extremely important. These testing approaches will help in unearthing security loopholes in the application (or website) at early stages of development & testing. All the important workflows like user validations, data encryption, testing behind firewalls, etc. will be done as a part of this process.

All healthcare applications need to adhere to the security requirements mentioned in the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). As per the act, healthcare providers hold the sole responsibility of securing the healthcare records of their patients.

A QA Consulting Services company with deep-rooted expertise in penetration testing and security testing can be useful in verifying the security aspects of the healthcare software.

Expertise in Usability Testing

On the usability front, the users of generic categories of applications (e.g. entertainment, gaming, shopping, etc.) might be the potential users of the healthcare application (or website). These could be consumer-facing apps using which users can get medical services online. Here, you can expect a mix of users who have varied knowledge about the technological aspects of the product.

On the other hand, the healthcare software (or product) will be predominantly used by the clinical staff, nurses, pharmacists, etc. There could be a number of scenarios where the clinical staff might face problems at the usability level.

Such situations can be avoided by performing rigorous usability testing of the website (or application). The overall user experience of the healthcare product (apps or devices) can be enhanced in a multi-fold manner by performing rigorous testing at scale. A QA consulting company that has provided consulting to a large number of healthcare clients can help in achieving this task with ease.

Also Read – The Perfect Checklist for Effective Website Testing

Perform Big Data Testing

Big Data testing has become an absolute necessity for enterprises that are dealing with a large amount of data. The scope of big data is not only limited to software enterprises. In fact, it has made huge inroads in the healthcare sector.

Big data analytics in the healthcare sector provides actionable insights about the patient’s data that helps in taking timely corrective actions. Not only this, healthcare enterprises can leverage the data in hand to improve staff productivity and reduce overhead costs.

The major advantage of big data testing in healthcare is the opportunity to leverage the data for disease care, drug inventions, and more. A reputed QA provider like KiwiQA can help healthcare providers reap the benefits of big data testing in healthcare.

Improve Staff Productivity

It is a known fact that the healthcare staff was overwhelmed during the COVID-19 pandemic. Technology was a huge enabler for them where mobile apps, wearable technologies, 4G/5G technologies, etc. helped in effective monitoring of the patients.

Productivity and efficiency is extremely important for the healthcare industry, particularly for the on-field staff. A top-quality healthcare application (or website) helps in bringing the most out of the staff; thereby helping them work without any interruptions. We have already witnessed how technology helped the hospital staff during the pandemic and the usage of technology in e-healthcare (and healthcare) will further increase in the years to come.

It also makes business sense to invest in quality assurance of their applications since it provides huge benefits to all the stakeholders (i.e. hospital, staff, and patients) of the system.

Also Read – CTO’s Getting Started Guide To Leverage Software Testing Outsourcing

Conclusion

Quality assurance in healthcare is becoming more important owing to the growing penetration of technology in that sector. The combination of big data, wearables, health monitoring systems, healthcare applications, and more are turning out to be a boon for patients, doctors, and hospital staff.

Healthcare enterprises can reduce the costs involved in quality assurance, whilst ensuring the product quality by partnering with a proven QA provider. Such a partnership will reap recursive benefits in the short-term as well as the long-term.