Custom Healthcare Software Development

Digitization and modern technologies offer healthcare providers many opportunities to improve their efficiency, control treatments, reduce costs, and increase security. Here are a few key benefits that digital transformation brings to healthcare organizations. 

Preventive and proactive care

Broad adoption of data tracking devices such as smartphones or wearable devices like smartwatches or smart bands combined with software that offers advanced data analytics opens a new door for healthcare providers. By using these devices, companies can offer a more proactive care approach and disease prevention instead of reacting to a problem and treating sick patients at a higher cost. Thanks to the real-time health monitoring, physicians and caregivers can recommend proper diet and physical exercise regime or suggest control visits to prevent negative health conditions. 

Cost reductions

Many patients no longer have to leave their homes for primary care visits, and they can be helped online with telemedicine or virtual doctors. This minimizes the risk of a patient getting sick in the waiting room but also allows providers to reduce the administrative cost of delivering care. It also helps the hospital staff to dedicate their time and energy to many other important healthcare tasks.

On-demand healthcare

The popularization of mobile devices results in a shift in how people expect their services to be delivered. This includes healthcare, as well. This increased mobility allows healthcare providers to take advantage of new applications to provide accurate and timely care, connecting patients with physicians easily. For example, an application can regularly send information to physicians that they receive and analyze on a regular basis, without having the patient come to the hospital. 

Smart records

The wide access to data collected using the Internet of Medical Things allows decentralized Electronic Medical Records to be made available to healthcare providers and caregivers, as well as patients themselves. This can be done within just a few seconds. By using artificial intelligence and machine learning, healthcare providers can reduce the time spent on managing the Electronic Medical Records. For example, machine learning-based solutions significantly improve the capabilities of predicting the risk of developing a given disease and help physicians to build better disease prevention plans. 

Patient engagement

Patient engagement and adherence are key concerns of healthcare providers. Digital acceleration in healthcare helps to add value here as well. Thanks to wearable devices and virtual assistants, patients can easily understand the benefits of doctor’s recommendations, follow them, and track their results. These digital tools help to improve care effectiveness and reduce the cost of medical treatment at the same time because they help to prevent diseases from ever happening.

Medical imaging

Information and insights extracted from medical images help to build an efficient diagnostic practice. Research shows that diagnostic errors could be responsible for one in ten patient deaths. Recent advancements in machine-learning-assisted image recognition facilitate the reliable automation of diagnostics. These tools remove the possibility of human error. By using artificial intelligence, digital twins, or 3D printing, healthcare providers can imagine the human body, follow the course of a given disease, analyze possible treatment scenarios and then measure the treatment results in one place. 

Virtual doctors

A virtual online assistant can offer patients fast answers to their questions, all the while optimizing the cost of labor. Even older patients are becoming more open to telemedicine solutions, and millennials already expect the care to be provided virtually rather than arranging in-person appointments. According to the Massachusetts General Hospital, up to 79% of patients consider telemedicine follow-up appointments more convenient than a traditional face-to-face meeting. 

Patient engagement

By bringing together the Internet of Things and patient management applications, providers can increase patient engagement and adherence – both critical to the success of treatments. By improving the patient’s medical knowledge and understanding of the offered treatment plan, healthcare providers can impact the success rate of the treatment massively and, at the same, reduce healthcare costs. 

Real-time health monitoring

Continuous remote health monitoring is now possible thanks to the Internet of Things sensors, wearable devices, and smartphones. These technologies allow doctors to easily track medical symptoms and conditions just as they occur. They can also be used to put forward accurate treatment plans or suggest new diet plans. All in all, patients can stay at home instead of staying at the hospital, all the while having relevant data monitored. 

Healthcare Internet of Things (IoT) 

The Internet of Things extends the connectivity beyond standard devices such as laptops, tablets, or smartphones to any objects that traditionally stayed off the grid. This includes medical equipment. For example, IoT enables devices to identify themselves to other items, interact with them, and exchange data. Healthcare providers can use IoT to provide patients with proactive and preventative care easily. Moreover, they can use IoT to build a network between connected physical devices to monitor hospital equipment on-premises to avoid losses or downtime. 

EMR software 

Electronic medical records streamline the communication between doctors and patients, facilitate the diagnostic process by introducing multiple data sources, and provide the staff with access to the patient’s medical history. There is no denying the EMR offers a lot of value to healthcare providers. The management of ERM can, however,  be very difficult. That’s why healthcare companies should seek professional help in building systems that allow extracting the most valuable data from EMR easily. 

Augmented Reality (AR)

Augmented Reality adds digital components to the real world, using the camera on a smartphone to enhance the overall experience. AR  solutions are now used in healthcare to present the possible outcomes over treatment – for example, a dental treatment – and visualize the desired results before the patient makes the final decision about the treatment.

Challenges of digital transformation in healthcare

Company culture

One of the key digital transformation challenges that healthcare companies face lies in their organizational culture and employee mindset. Their staff is ofter resistant to change or unwilling to embrace new digital tools. This may happen even among the company’s leadership. That’s why it’s so important that healthcare providers introduce new tools following a thorough and well-planned change management process. Sometimes staff training might a smart step to initiate the process of digital transformation. 

Choosing the right technology

Picking the right technologies for the job is another key challenge facing many healthcare providers who often lack internal resources to advise them. And selecting a proper software platform for a digital healthcare solution has a massive impact on its future growth and scalability, as well as maintenance. That’s why teaming up with an external IT provider is such a good idea. A software development agency with years of experience in the HealthTech market can bring in a lot of value in the process of choosing the new tools and technologies.  

Medical data security

Finally, there’s the question of data security. Data privacy protection requires technologies that allow encrypted healthcare communication that is also compliant with the highest security standards for medical applications. Any medical device or software solution that can access the Electronic Medical Records and processes any patient’s health data needs to follow strict security regulations and standards. Adapting solutions to these regulations is often challenging, especially for HealthTech startups that are rapidly evolving and building innovative products.