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In the healthcare industry, digital transformation refers to the advancements and improvements brought about by digital technologies. Incorporating digital technologies is transforming healthcare provision, operations, management, and medical billing services. Due to the increasing digital transformation, the market currently offers telemedicine, wearable devices, and electronic health records (EHR). Several other technologies have contributed to the efficiency, accessibility, and effectiveness of different healthcare services.
The importance of software development in the healthcare industry cannot be underestimated. Software development has revolutionized healthcare – and this growth is expected to intensify with time.
Let’s discuss below the general benefits of software development in the medical industry and how different trends like CI/CD, serverless architecture, MLOps, and low code contribute to adequate healthcare.
Benefits of software development
- Rising Efficiency – With the assistance of digital tools, healthcare professionals can streamline administrative tasks. They can have a refined process of handling patient records, scheduling appointments, and prescribing medications.
- Enhanced Patient Care – Various digital technologies are introduced for medical practitioners, which can help them track patient progress, collect and analyze data, and conclude with well-informed decisions.
- Strengthened Communication – Another benefit of software development is the creation of digital tools capable of facilitating communication between patients, medical practices, and other stakeholders. This will allow improvement in the coordination and continuity of care.
- Amplified Accessibility – With advanced digital technologies, patients can access healthcare services more quickly and effectively, regardless of location.
- Compared to other industries, it took a long time for healthcare organizations to shift from a waterfall development model to agile development and cloud-native technologies. And it makes sense since the healthcare industry is heavily regulated and under stringent quality controls. Nevertheless, the current healthcare sector is extensively adopting the latest development technologies and workflows.
Trends of Software Development in Healthcare
Continuous Integration (CI)/Continuous Delivery (CD)
CI/CD is a combination of the two most significant software developments. These trends involve implementing automated processes to frequently or regularly build, test, and install software updates. With these practices, there can be an improvement in the reliability, speed, and quality of software development. Particularly in the healthcare industry, this can be beneficial as it demands timely and accurate updates.
CI/CD can evolve the healthcare industry by offering the following advantages:
- Improved security – CI/CD enables the elimination of human error and improves software security by automating the software deployment process.
- Better reliability – CI/CD utilizes automated processes for building and testing software updates. This can help with minimizing errors and enhancing the reliability of the software.
- Quicker deployment – With CI/CD, healthcare organizations can efficiently and quickly deploy software updates. This fastens the process providing the user with additional features and fixes.
- Greater agility – CI/CD allows healthcare institutes to be more responsive to varying needs and requirements. This increases their agility and ability to adjust to new challenges.
- Serverless Architecture – Serverless architecture is considered a significant trend in software development. This includes practicing cloud-based services for creating and running applications without the requirement of managed infrastructure. The healthcare industry can significantly benefit from this, especially concerning reliability, cost-effectiveness, scalability, and flexibility.
- Reliability – In the healthcare industry, accurate and timely data access is critical. As cloud-based services are significantly reliable, with integrated redundancies and switchover features, they ensure a stabilized uptime. The progressing serverless monitoring tools can guarantee the reliability of health services.
- Cost-effectiveness – Cloud-based services allow healthcare organizations to focus on paying only for the utilized resources instead of paying for the management and maintenance of the infrastructure too. By doing so, cloud-based services assist with minimizing costs and increasing efficiency.
- Scalability – With the help of serverless architecture, healthcare organizations can bolster or constrict their applications and services as required. The organizations do not need to purchase or manage any extra infrastructure for scalability.
- Flexibility – Healthcare organizations can now efficiently build and deploy applications and services with serverless architecture. This develops and enhances agility and the capability of responding to modifying needs and requirements.
Healthcare MLOps
Machine learning operations (MLOps) is a significant software development trend. It includes applying practices and tools that assist with managing the end-to-end machine learning (ML) lifecycle. In this trend, MLOps handle the different phases from development and training to deployment and maintenance.
In the healthcare industry, machine learning is gaining prominence as it is beneficial for analyzing and interpreting bulk data related to patient care and healthcare delivery. The benefits of MLOps in healthcare in healthcare sector comprise:
- Improved security
- Boosted collaboration
- Better efficiency
- Greater agility
Low Code
The trend of low code consists of generating customized software applications and systems using graphical user interfaces and other visual tools. This trend involves little coding. In the healthcare industry, low code is advantageous when efficient and quick development of custom applications and systems is required.
The benefits include:
- Enhanced efficiency
- Accelerated development
- Higher flexibility
Conclusion
Various sectors of the healthcare industry and medical billing services are expected to experience a dramatic transformation with software development in the future. Several software development trends like CI/CD, low code, and serverless architecture are constantly integrated into the development and deployment of software that is on its way to differently shaping the healthcare industry. As a result, the healthcare industry will prosper with benefits such as increased reliability, scalability, agility, and cost-effectiveness. Moreover, healthcare practitioners will be able to offer more efficient patient care.
