The pharmaceutical industry is the most regulated industry in the world and it is a big contributor to the health care system. Software testing has become a vital part of pharmaceutical applications due to its complex business workflows and life-threatening risks. Software Testing is also important due to the persistent pharmaceutical industry demands for new features and integration with other systems. A case study published in Pharmacy Times, a woman took medication for three months which was accidentally dispensed by a pharmacist. She suffered serious health problems until a physician found the root cause. For safe medication, we should improve the quality of pharmaceutical applications and enhance methods of drug dispensing. Let’s have a look at the following challenges that a tester may face while testing pharmaceutical applications and the challenges of Software Testing in the Pharmaceutical Industry.
Domain Knowledge
Domain knowledge is the key to testing a pharmaceutical application. Unlike other systems, the pharmaceutical industry deals with the health and well-being of people who are facing health issues and going through physical and psychological trauma. Any mistake in data or patient treatment can lead to serious health issues. Therefore, it is essential for the software test team to be familiar with all business scenarios.
Business Critical Applications
All pharmacy systems are health-critical applications. If the system does not display a clinical warning for a patient’s drug allergy reactions and the patient starts to consume the medication, this may cause severe health problems for the patient. Therefore, testers need to configure patient and drug information in such a way that it performs all the possible clinical checks.
Pay Attention to Numbers
Software testers need to pay attention to numbers being used in the pharmacy system; for example, dose quantity specified by the prescriber. Any mistakes in dose quantity can lead to severe health issues for example an overdose of medication may cause certain side effects like high blood pressure. In addition, testers can also focus on the functionality which allow the system to automatically populate dose quantity in automatic generated SMS, email or phone call for the patient medication.
Keyboard Shortcuts
Pharmacists frequently use keyboard shortcuts to expedite the daily work and the use of a mouse is very less in the pharmacy business. A list of keyboard shortcuts should be prepared before starting the testing phase and it should be shared with all the stakeholders and software test team.
Drug Name Confusion
It is common in many medications that drug names are very similar which creates confusion for the testers. For safe medication, a pharmacist goes through different standard procedures before issuing medication to the patient. Therefore, the tester has to pay attention to the drug name along with its strength and form to avoid confusion. In addition, the test team needs to understand the difference between brand and generic drugs.
Integration with Third-Party Systems
Most pharmacy systems integrate third-party tools such as insurance management systems, barcode scanners, electronic prescription software like sure script, and delivery systems. Performance could be an issue while sending a request or getting a response from third-party systems. Up-gradation of pharmacy software or third-party systems should not stop communication between the two systems.
Testers may face problems while communicating to a third-party system like an insurance system because normally such systems do not accept test data and it also costs the pharmacy for each transaction. To solve this problem, testers can create a utility that can act as an insurance system, accept requests from the pharmacy system and testers can also send their desired response using that utility to the pharmacy system.
Availability of Test Data
Testers should have information about real-time drugs and diseases which cause interaction or contraindication between two drugs or create an allergic reaction with a patient’s lifestyle or medical history. A checklist of all test data needs to be prepared before starting the test execution. The source of test data should be reliable.
Enforcement of Laws
Pharmacy systems contain sensitive information about patients and their health care. Therefore it is mandatory to assure that any change in data or an attempt to access the data is being recorded by the system for audit purposes. This is also a HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) requirement to ensure data privacy and security of medical information. Some states have specific rules and regulations that may not apply to other states. For example, a drug may be a controlled medication in one state but not in others. The information displayed on an Rx label also differs from one state to another. Therefore, testers need to make sure application is aligned with certain rules of specific state.
It is critical to test any application which involves the well-being of people. Effectively handling these challenges may help a testing team to reduce risk of error and deliver a robust and reliable application. This is why Software Testing is needed in the Pharmaceutical Industry.
About The Author
Qaiser Munir currently works as a freelance tester based in Pakistan. He is an outcome driven software quality assurance engineer with seven years experience in providing services in software testing and quality assurance with focus on “doing it right the first time!”
He is fluent in Functional, Regression, Smoke, Performance and Automation testing with a proven ability to set priorities, identify issues, and drive issues to acceptable resolution in a timely manner.
