Is your healthcare institution ready for the new Era of medical care? Are your professionals ready to address the needs of a new generation of patients?
The world is changing and developing lightning fast. The internet has enabled a democratization of devices and services on an unprecedented scale, and the healthcare sector is feeling that pressure now.
Patients want more from their institutions: more information, more points of contact, better access to quality treatments everything that can bring them closer to the institution, its doctors and their medical data. At this point, clinical teams are challenged to go forward on their role of health agents. They are now information managers and have to transform this data into useful information to support more informed decisions and increasing the quality of care.
Is your institution ready?
Is your information system ready to provide the necessary tools to these teams? Has your healthcare institution the necessary infrastructure to support a consumer-directed health information system?
Before you say you have a ready-to-work system, think carefully; just because this new reality is impossible to maintain without trusted and reliable healthcare IT systems. It goes far behind “just” PCs, peripherals and data centers. We are talking about integrated IT, real custom ERP solutions, that integrate both front and back office systems in a seamless way and ensuring a 100% interoperable ecosystem.
Custom software for the healthcare sector: Healthcare IT is both a driver and an enabler of the sector at this present moment.
This scenario is not the future. It’s a reality! Healthcare IT is both a driver and an enabler of the health care sector at this present moment. In private – and public- sector the institutions need to move forward and ensure the sustainability of a reliable healthcare business model that relays on the trust of the patients they serve every day, and in a new level of proficiency of the clinical teams.
There are stones on the path
It’s true that the current barriers are huge and include more than just lack of technological skills; we are talking more of an over dominance of proprietary systems that result on data becoming locked in supplier’s systems, resulting in a lack of interoperability. There is also poor-quality data and insufficient or inexistent analytic tools in the healthcare sector.
It’s necessary to adopt health care software solutions that streamline practice processes and assure interoperability, optimize processes and costs, improving efficiency, the overall quality of care, minimizing medical errors. Also, looking towards the current and future demands of a paperless society.
Have you tried an agile software development approach?
Agile software development is no more than an approach to software development, according to which requirements and solutions are delivered through the collaborative effort of self-organizing and cross-functional teams and their customer needs.
Agile development can help solve the challenges to healthcare technology. It leads to:
- Agility – staying agile while managing costs is the cornerstone of competitive advantage in a rapidly changing healthcare industry.
- Predictability – agile approach can provide more accurate data about costs and the timings of processes. This helps keep the project on schedule and on budget.
- Transparency – iteratively development ensures that right functionality and interfaces are being developed. Unlike the traditional waterfall process, an agile software development process promotes collaborative work between all the teams. Helps to define the most valuable features.
- Scalability – different features can be re-prioritized, or even introduced as development is ongoing, without unpredicted costs. It’s important that the healthcare software meet all of the requirements and regulations of the medical software.
Most healthcare organizations have a stable set of processes and capabilities because such a backbone is essential for effective operations.
Research by McKinsey’s Organization Practice* has shown that agility combines a stable backbone with dynamism. According to McKinsey’s, most healthcare organizations have a stable set of processes and capabilities because such a backbone is essential for effective operations. Payors, for example, must be able to execute a range of core operational processes, such as claims handling, provider contract negotiations, and regulatory compliance. Providers must follow formal procedures to promote high-quality patient care, handle patient data properly, ensure compliance with health information requirements, and execute timely claims submissions.
The few healthcare organizations that lack a stable backbone typically experience calamitous results. “Payors and providers that want to become agile must learn how to build on their backbone so they can shift from practices that inadvertently promote undesired behavior (e.g., siloed decision making) to those that enhance their organization’s dynamic capabilities.”
* “Why agility is imperative for healthcare organizations” McKinsey Insights. May 2017.
When is agile a good approach?
Agile stands for an iterative software development methodology that can be valuable to healthcare projects under some scenarios:
- When most, but not all, of the solution, is understood. Start with the goal of the process. The goal needs to be specific and measurable.
- When your institution believes or suspects that there may be a number of scope changes for unknown areas of the solution.
- When is necessary to empower stakeholders to participate in developing the solution. The feedback from users is incorporated in every phase which in turn helps address problems.
- When you want the assessment and evaluation of the solutions.
- When there is time to discover the solution through iterative and continuous work.
More and more organizations are adopting agile software development in order to improve processes and answer to patient needs.
Agility is no longer a buzzword, but a concept that is being put in place to develop trusted custom software. Although the healthcare industry reacts to changes very slowly, we will see more and more organizations adopting agile software development in order to improve processes and answer to patient needs.
McKinsey conducted an outside-in assessment of nine payors and providers, to identify effective strategies that healthcare companies can use to gain speed without losing stability. “Our analysis found that the more agile healthcare companies demonstrate better organizational health and stronger performance, as reflected in higher patient satisfaction scores, better outcomes, and healthier financial results”, measured McKinsey’s Organizational Health Index.
Blue Screen is an agile software development and system maintenance services provider with 20 years of experience. Operating in international IT markets, Blue Screen’s activity extends through the United States, Europe, Brazil and Cape Verde providing specialized teams that support customers in experiencing excellency with integrated global IT solutions.
If your healthcare organization wants to thrive the agile development methodology wave hire competent trusted healthcare software and service provider. Feel free to contact us.