Why QA and Testing are Important for the Healthcare Industry

You may know about the recent headline on April 2021 Healthcare Data Breaches, Ransomware attacks, and many other hacking incidents had harmed business associates of HIPAA-covered entities and multiple healthcare provider clients.  

A similar incident also appeared about the TOI news on e-Virus cases in Pharma Companies, Hospitals, and Healthcare Firms witnessed an increase of 45% in cyberattacks.  

 Both these incidents had one thing in common, and that was hackers trying to enter personal information of the healthcare facilities and sensitive patient data affecting the healthcare business. Thus, it becomes extremely crucial to minimize the risks of data breaches and hacking incidents, and it can only be done by understanding the importance of QA and Testing in the Healthcare Industry.

The reason for knowing the significance of Healthcare Testing Services & QA is that they can help you secure and protect the most confidential information of your patients and enables you to meet unique industry needs.  

Moreover, it is vital to ensure that patients' data should fully comply with regulations, mainly mandated by HIPAA. However, when it comes to fulfilling the ever-growing demands of Healthcare Sectors, one of the most significant challenges these industries face these days is digitization.  

The purpose of digitization is to instantly help people connect with devices & medical experts and offer them better services than their expectations.   

Similarly, speed and quality are two crucial factors, or we can say two core essentials that should be served effectively to the healthcare sector.  

In a nutshell, technology is the most significant need of the healthcare industry today because applications are being created to help patients get adequate care and service anytime & anywhere.  

Besides, there is an endless number of healthcare products such as glucose monitors, wearables, and the most popular types of healthcare software such as EHR, Medical Research Software, Telemedicine, Appointment Scheduler, Medical Diagnosis, E-prescribing, etc. In addition, these products and software are used by institutions as well as individuals concerned about their health and well-being.   

Also, these products, applications, or software play a crucial role in the market and help companies experience tremendous growth and economy. However, when it comes to providing the delivery of healthcare products with 100% accuracy and precision, it becomes necessary for healthcare providers to consider robust Healthcare Testing Services and Quality Assurance.   

What are Healthcare Testing Services & Quality Assurance?  

Healthcare Software Testing or Healthcare Domain Testing is the service offered by IT leaders or Software Testing Companies to assure that the healthcare app is tested well to meet quality and performance standards. For example, standards, safety, compliance, accuracy, cross dependency with other entities, and many more.   

The objective of Medical Software Testing is to ensure reliability, quality, performance, efficiency, and safety of the healthcare application so that patients or facilities can use it easily without any hassle.   

On the other hand, assuring the quality of healthcare systems is a critical factor because it helps improve patient outcomes and hospital reimbursement. Generally, QA professionals focus on quality goals, develop strategies, gather and analyze before-and-after data.  

Also, they integrate with various other departments to facilitate team building within the organization. Plus, they give assurance to healthcare organizations about their medical facilities and ensure that they will follow all necessary federal, state, or local laws and regulations, including third-party payer obligations.   

Read Our Case Study on Medical-Devices based Healthcare App Testing

In short, the difference between Software Testing and Quality Assurance in Healthcare is that software testing helps validate business workflows and take necessary performance measures to obtain the desired results. And this validation process of software testing is done by monitoring of strategies, implementation, and execution of every defined parameter to help healthcare organizations achieve the highest quality output with shorter development cycles.   

Ready to read more about the Role of Testing in Healthcare? Click Here.   

Inversely, QA is the promise that users from the medical industry will have a positive experience, and they will get complete satisfaction for whatever the products and services they will use of healthcare companies.  

In other words, Quality Assurance aims to meet the needs of front-end and back-end processes in the most efficient manner; it also helps Healthcare Application Testing Companies deliver the intended product or service on time and within budget.   

Common Healthcare Application Testing Challenges    

• Domain Expertise & System Understanding   

Having an in-depth understanding of Medical Device Testing is a big challenge because the health care domain is very broad and challenging to understand due to the involvement of hospitals, doctors, or many other entities like Insurance Companies, Patients/Consumers, Regulatory Authorities, and Healthcare & Life-Science Solution Vendors.  

Into the bargain, there are several basic terminologies of the Health Care System that you need to remember while testing. For Instance, Provider, Claim, Broker, Medicare, Finance, Medicaid, CPT Code, HIPAA.   

Your Healthcare Application is at Risk. ? Talk to our experts for Cyber Security Testing  

Being the reliable provider of Healthcare Testing Services, you may have to prepare different test cases and understand the healthcare business process to ensure the smooth functioning of the system.  

Over & above, you should also know about different testing types for Healthcare Application Testing from Interoperability Testing, Platform Testing, Conformance Testing, Usability Testing, Shift-Left Cyber QA, ERP Testing & Integrations, to Functional Testing.  

Yet, all such things will be possible if you have appropriate knowledge of Healthcare Domain Testing. Otherwise, you may feel difficulty meeting the varied needs of healthcare providers & customers. Therefore, before performing Software Testing in the Healthcare Domain, you should have the following things:   

• Thought Process  

• Reporting and Communication.  

• Thorough Understanding & Mapping of Business Situation.  

• The Glocal Approach.  

• Automating the Process.  

• The Modern Methodology (DevOps and Agile).  

• Understanding the Code.  

• System Development Lifecycle (SDLC).  

• Project Management.   

• Rational Clarity.   

• Awareness of Latest Web & Mobile Technological Trends.   

• Planning & Documentation.   

• Cross-Browser Testing Skills.   

• Front-End Communication.   

• Synergy & Trust Building.   

• Constant Learning Process.   

• Testing Tools, Technologies & Resources.  

• Some QA Skills (Attention to Detail, Time Management, Problem-Solving, Multitasking, Written & Verbal Communication, Knowledge of Quality Standards, Team Player & Leadership Skills).  

Other Healthcare App Testing Challenges are as follows:   

• Security & Vulnerabilities   

The healthcare application should be secure to keep the patients’ personal information and other confidential data protected from hackers. Moreover, it includes financial data, which needs careful security testing to ensure that patient’s credit card information will be stored safely.  

Additionally, the application meets HIPAA compliance and helps users make online payments safely in the app. It also helps minimize the risks of technical failure and malicious data attacks.  

• Cross Dependency of Software   

If the healthcare application is complex in nature, in that case, it may include various layers and components that can cause side effects when you make any changes in one component or layer, but not in other.   

However, Software Testing in Healthcare Domain requires experienced testers and more agility. Moreover, testers should know about data integrity, various database queries, and data scrubbing before testing because it can help you get the test done in a more fluid manner.  

They must be able to use automation to produce data and know a bit about AI to reduce the risks associated with testing in the healthcare industry.   

• Testing Center of Excellence   

Since industries today embrace the TCoe (Testing Center of Excellence) model, healthcare industries need to learn about this model to ensure the robustness and scalability of their applications.  

Apart from this, due to the wide variety of healthcare firms and applications, it is necessary to understand the testing scope with quality standards, testing processes, test tools, and industry best practices to conduct numerous testing types in healthcare.   

Besides, you should also perform maintenance testing in healthcare to discover device problems or various other application issues time-to-time to help users get the best software experience.  

Nonetheless, the best way to handle all these tasks with fewer human errors is automation testing. Because it allows you to get maximum testing efficiency, speed up the development & delivery, increase accuracy & productivity, and ease the introduction of CI/CD.  

Also, it helps you get maximum perks without compromising on the applications' quality and performance.   

Also Explore Cybersecurity Challenges in Healthcare Industry

Advantages of Test Automation in the Healthcare Industry   

Whether you’re planning to get Medical Mobile Device Testing Service and Web-Based Testing for Healthcare Applications thus, Test Automation can help you gain several benefits that you can find out below.  

• Authorization & Authentication Validation   

One of the major healthcare concerns is to safeguard the patients’ most sensitive data, which is possible with manual testing. Still, this process consumes so much time, especially if the matter is to give a faster release experience to clients.   

With Test Automation, healthcare software QA teams can prepare compelling test cases. They can also focus on valid and invalid test data to ensure that all the application features related to user authentication are fully functional and allow patients to secure their personal data within the application.   

• Cost Saving   

Other than Quality Assurance in Healthcare, there are various operations and factors that you need to test in order to make the application suitable for targeted users. But if you are working individually and going to test all the operations alone, it is difficult to say how much time you will take to spot errors and complete the entire project.   

The better way is to go with Test Automation for Healthcare Mobile Device Testing because it allows you to reduce the waiting time and boost your development.  

Instead of providing healthcare app delivery in months, you can wind up your project within a few days and help your client save a lot of money and get a faster release experience.   

• More Accurate Tests   

With Test Automation, you can easily provide error-free software to your customer because automated testing is more accurate compared to testing applications manually.  

The reason for this is, humans are error-prone, and they can definitely make many mistakes while testing healthcare applications and assuring the quality to healthcare domains.   

On the flip side, Test Automation is machine-dependent. Due to this, you can ensure the minimum errors in the application, and it allows you to minimize the risk of failure.  

Furthermore, there are various AI-based tools or Testbots available online that you can check to unleash the full potential of test automation accuracy and perform exploratory testing even better than humans.  

Thus, whenever you plan to offer Healthcare Testing Services to your customers, always help them know the benefits of Test Automation as a new addition in the Software Testing Industry.   

For more information or bespoke healthcare app testing support, feel free to reach out experts at BugRaptors.