The
healthcare industry has evolved over the years to include the latest
technologies for accurate diagnosis, prognosis, treatment, and rehabilitation.
In modern hospitals, highly sophisticated machines are used with the latest
embedded software to diagnose and treat patients. It is important that the software
should be quality assured to
ensure the results generated by the sophisticated equipment are 100% accurate.
For should there be any inaccuracies in the readings, the entire treatment
protocol can go haywire and the patients’ life itself could be in danger. This
makes QA software testing such
a critical component in the manufacturing and maintenance of medical apps and
devices.
With
increased digitization, the healthcare industry is increasingly using
sensor-embedded mobile devices to check the health stats of individuals
remotely. While this is a great initiative, a lot depends on how the mobile app
or any other accessory works to give the most accurate results about the health
stats of an individual. To make this happen, rigorous healthcare application testing is
necessary. Moreover, as we move more towards an Internet-based health delivery
system, there is a greater need to conduct healthcare QA testing and healthcare app security testing to ensure complete data security
as well as accuracy of the readings.
Also,
certain factors are needed to be considered when you are looking to offer a
hundred percent software qualityassurance for medical devices. Some of these are as follows.
1). Interoperability
of various health devices: To get highly accurate diagnostic results,
doctors and paramedics depend on a number of sophisticated devices such as MRI,
CT Scan, EEG, etc. These should possess greater interoperability to be able to
provide a comprehensive healthcare report of individual patients.
Interoperability thorough healthcaresoftware testing ensures multiple devices using different platforms to
easily access each other’s data and fulfill the required security compliance
related to data privacy.
2). How good the application is: To deliver quality
outcomes for the healthcare app, its attributes like functionality,
performance, security, and usability, among others, ought to be tested
meticulously. Comprehensive testing of an app is a highly specialized job that
requires a huge amount of domain knowledge and experience. This is where the
role of a reputed software
quality assurance company with years of experience in testing software
and applications comes into play.
3).
Security of the healthcare application: When businesses strategize
about developing healthcare related apps for people on-the-go, the issue of cybersecurity in healthcare comes into
focus. As very sensitive personal data related to patients are shared through
the online platform, it becomes imperative to make the entire ecosystem
hack-proof. To do this in a systematic way, penetration testing becomes
essential. It ensures hidden glitches and vulnerabilities are identified and
the app is made compliant with safety protocols like HIPAA.
4). Making
a sense out of compiled data: A huge amount of data gets generated
through various sensors, diagnostic tools, as well as, healthcare applications.
To make some sense out of this mountain of data, these should be compiled and
presented to the healthcare experts in an easy-to-understand way. This allows
doctors to make a quick and accurate assessment of the patient’s health
condition and decide the line of treatment. Here, big data analysis can play a
critical role. It analyses the data generated through various diagnostic tools
to deliver the right inference for doctors to make correct diagnosis.
5).
Cutting down on complexities: In any modern hospital, the entire
healthcare system is highly centralized where the data related to patients can
be accessed by authorized persons for various medical as well as administrative
needs. These may include nurses looking to deliver the right medicinal dosage
to the patient, the pharmacist looking for the right generic combination of
medicine available in his or her stock, or the administrative staff preparing
the bill. Here, high quality software
assurance can provide a seamless interaction between the stakeholders
and the healthcare system to offer a holistic experience.
Conclusion
The
above-mentioned reasons highlight the criticality of comprehensive software
assurance of medical devices for delivering high-quality healthcare services to
the patients. Remember, any flaw in the software system can generate erroneous
output, which may lead the healthcare expect to conduct wrong diagnosis and
treatment. Thus, it is imperative that there should be no loose threads in the
strategy for testing embedded software in diagnostic tools and healthcare
applications to ensure their accuracy and seamless functioning.
