Applications for health care have become incredibly popular in the last few years because they have shown their great effectiveness during the pandemic and are now developing at an incredible speed. They help simplify the interaction between the doctor and the patient, specialists of different industries, improve the work of medical institutions, and solve many problems. However, such software will be effective only if it undergoes thorough testing. Specialists must check whether the software meets international standards, whether it can perform its completed functions, how convenient it is to use, and how well the protection of patients’ data is good.
Weak points that need to be checked first
There are many varieties of healthcare software, but the basic steps for healthcare app testing will be roughly the same. We’d like to tell you what points you need to pay attention to first and how the testing process takes place.
Compliance with HIPAA requirements
For your healthcare app to work legally, it must comply with HIPAA requirements and pass the appropriate verification. At first glance, such conditions seem simple and easy to follow, but in practice, it turns out that not all software can do this, so you cannot do it without an independent audit. First of all, you need to check:
- Role-based access management works correctly;
- The application offers safe authentication;
- Protected medical information (PHI) is encrypted;
- Data backup is automated.
Government bodies of different countries want to ensure that patients’ data will not fall into the hands of criminals, so they set strict requirements for cyber security.
User interface
The user interface should be as simple and intuitive as possible. It should be easy to use both for a young guy working in IT and for an older woman who has only recently started to master a smartphone. In addition, you must be prepared to have your application used by people with disabilities (for example, people with impaired vision). You need to take this into account when designing the interface.
Compatibility with medical systems
Most likely, your clinic already uses software related to medical systems (EHR, HMS, MPMS). If your application is compatible with these systems, it will help you greatly simplify the work of the staff and make your software even more valuable and practical.
Compatibility with IoT
The Internet of Things has flooded the market; today, everyone has a fitness bracelet, smartwatch, headphones, or even smart glasses. If your software is compatible with IoT, it will give you several advantages. For example, it will be easier for a doctor to monitor a person’s physical activity with the help of a fitness bracelet, which will immediately transmit information to the application. In addition, modern smartwatches have handy functions, such as measuring blood pressure and pulse, oxygen level and blood sugar, and many others. Your application can receive this data to help the doctor adjust therapy.
Productivity
Many novice specialists believe that healthcare apps should have low performance but, at the same time, need to remember that they should store large amounts of information, meet strict requirements, and maintain compatibility with different systems. All this requires sufficiently high performance from the software. In addition, you have to count on the fact that if your project is successful, many people will start using it, meaning you need to scale and increase productivity.
How to test healthcare software?
You should only take on such a complex task on your own if you understand what needs to be done. Otherwise, it is better to delegate testing to professionals like https://testfort.com/healthcare-software-testing who, thanks to their experience and knowledge, will use all their efforts to achieve the best result.
To test healthcare software, you need to go through several essential steps:
- Planning. It is one of the most important stages because you need to discuss the budget and timing of testing, what types of tests should be used, and what specialists should be involved in.
- Determine whether the software meets the requirements.
- Functional and non-functional testing.
- Regression testing.
- Compilation of the report.
As soon as the specialists finish the testing, they study the errors, qualify them, recommend their elimination, and send the report to the developers. After that, specialists who wrote the program code must make changes and return the code to testers for additional verification. It helps to ensure that the changes were made in full, helped to solve the problem, and did not lead to new errors.
How to choose a team of testers?
Testing will help make your software more qualitative and effective, but only on the condition that high-level professionals take up the task. When choosing a team of testers, first of all, you should find out if they have experience working with healthcare software and find out reviews of previous clients. It is also worth discovering their methods and tools since only an extensive testing base will help cover all variants of tested cases.
