So how does software testing and healthcare come together? The field of software testing is growing at an unprecedented rate. This means that not only has software testing a lot of scope in the future to come but also its applications in different walks of life are something to watch out for.
With growing digitisation, more and more industries are turning online. This means that more and more industries have the chance to reach out to people easily without having to worry about geographical constraints or that their customers are located at different locations on the Earth. Digitisation is also speeding up the pace for software development to take place.
In other words, to reach out to their customers, organizations, and enterprises are harnessing the best of digital platforms and coming up with application software that has the potential to change the picture of the industry. Moreover, more and more customers are finding this software extremely convenient and are drawn towards using it.
Be it eCommerce, mobility, education, and learning or any other field of life, the necessity of software application has become more than apparent, which in turn is giving the boost to the software testing industry.
The software testing industry, on the other hand, is one of the biggest enablers of user-friendly software platforms that deliver the desired applications they were built for in the first place. For example, different forms of testing such as functional and non-functional testing ensure that both detailed functionalities of application software are working fine along with its behavior as it should be.
Digitisation for Healthcare
For the healthcare industry digitisation has been one of the biggest advances to date. As time passes every bit of the industry is finding itself on digital platforms and multiple tasks. For example, for the longest amount of time, the healthcare industry has been under the burden of a lot of manual operational work. Be it for patients or doctors, manual records were maintained that were not only time consuming but also created a room for several errors due to manual intervention.
With digitisation in the picture, such problems are put to rest. Moreover, the introduction of application software is further easing such tasks and speeding up the processes in the healthcare scenario. This includes maintaining patient entry and health records online along with other administrative tasks.
But as the healthcare industry advances in the age of software, it is important to note that it is also opening the industry towards several threats. Data security which has already been a huge challenge has gone to an altogether different level, creating one of the biggest challenges for the healthcare system. As a result, not only is there a need for software application testing services to evolve with the growing threats but also anticipate how the new needs of the digitised healthcare system will look like.
Software Testing and Healthcare
Even if we talk about the situation of the pandemic, where several physical constraints have been put up to contain its spread, everyone is ultimately relying on digital technologies. While there was already a huge shift going on in the healthcare sector with the push to digitisation, it has been sped up due to COVID19 scenario.
Therefore, the new age of the healthcare system introduces software-enabled services such as Electronic Medical Records, Admission, Discharge and Transfer Reports, Picture Archive, and Communication along with billing, labs, and pharmacy. Moreover, all of these will be connected and integrated into each other for a smooth transition and easy access to records.
But, as things turn digital it is also imperative to notice the concern of patient safety. By patient safety, the direct inference is usually in terms of medical procedures where the survival of the patient is at stake. However, in another scenario, due to the digitization of services in the medical industry, there is an emerging concern of patient data. This is where the software testing industry has to come into the picture.
While the medical staff is given adequate training and undergoes several tests to ensure their fitness for handling patients, the same goes on for software. What happens if the system designed for medical organisational messes up the patient data? Or if during a moment of crisis when there is a need for quick information, the system is deliberately delayed and crashes. While timing is already a crucial factor in the healthcare system directly affecting the survival of a patient, software testing has to make sure that the transition between multiple integrated systems happens smoothly.
In other words, to deliver successful patient outcomes, software testing of the healthcare industry has to be fast, rapid, efficient, and leave no room for any kind of errors. The user journey must be enjoyable along with functionality, performance, and usability issues. Since there is already a resistance to digitization that goes against the traditional processes of the system, software tester has to be extra careful about ensuring a bug-free and smooth software experience.
Moreover, apart from these the non-functional aspect of the software, data security is also something requiring instant attention. This is because patients’ health records have a huge demand in the black market and people are willing to do anything to obtain these through illegal practices. Sometimes hackers attack application software and the threat goes undetected for the longest amounts of time.
Therefore, software testers have to adopt agile practices to make sure that such incidents do not take place in the future. Through best practices for software testing, a lot of such problems can be managed without the fear of constantly being attacked. Not only this, but the software will have to be updated frequently and new test cases will have to be created to keep a check on the latest threats and safeguard against them.
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