Here, there, and everywhere. Remember how the good old song by the Beatles used to go? While Liverpool’s Four sang about love, there’s another thing that is surely ubiquitous nowadays. This is healthcare software that we’re talking about, as today’s healthcare system’s capabilities would have been quite abridged without it. Its multi-level integration with IoT has created an ecosystem that can assist both patients and healthcare providers in setting the healthcare quality level unprecedentedly high.
Healthcare institutions are nowadays actively adopting software solutions that help them automate inner processes, aid medical personnel, and improve patients’ experience. In accordance with The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, across all hospital types – from large urban to small rural – 95% have already adopted a widespread usage of healthcare software. Equally popular with the public and private healthcare organizations, healthcare software solutions are here to implement a 360-degree change in the healthcare delivery process.
- Hospital Management Software
We’ll start our discussion with the software systems used to govern hospitals and everything that pertains to task streamlining and management within healthcare institutions. Nowadays, custom healthcare software development companies claim this type of software to be one of the most popular ones with their clients, as healthcare providers understand the value of perfectly gauged operations within a hospital.
These platforms are nothing else but an all-around portal for managing everything that happens within a healthcare institution, from assigning tasks to nurses to storing patients’ information and so on and so forth. Yet, it seems like such comprehensive coverage of the hospitals’ needs is just one reason that justifies the healthcare software’s predicted value growth of up to $30 billion by the end of 2023. Hospital management software is quite a comprehensive tool that enables medical personnel to work more efficiently and stay focused on “one task at a time” instead of dispersing their attention on multiple tasks, which might eventually lead to lamentable consequences.
- Hospital Information Systems
There is a bit of difference between hospital management software and hospital information systems. While the former is meant to ensure a smooth operation of an entire hospital, the latter is a rather important tool in health insurance product development, as it adds to the efficient and yet secure handling of medical records. There is no need to dwell upon why digital records are better: they are faster and easier to retrieve. You never know when even a slight delay in getting the information needed can either save or hinder a patient’s life. As long healthcare software remains HIPAA-compliant, hospital information systems are here to stay.
- Online Appointments Systems
Every healthcare services provider aims at ensuring the patients’ access to steady and bumpless services. No hospital or private physician wants their patients to get irritated simply because they cannot schedule a consultation with their doctor or when they have to spend too much time on it. The neoteric online appointment systems are here to help patients book, cancel, and reschedule appointments within a matter of seconds, regardless of the platform they use.
The basic premise of catering to modern customers’ needs is to let them enjoy your services while on the go. Online appointment systems render scheduling one’s appointment with a doctor easier than getting a coffee to go. What is more, the medical staff also benefits from having such a system in place, as it lets them manage the workload efficiently by keeping a precise track of the appointments planned.
- Hospital Billing Software
A smooth patient flow and properly-gauged medical staff management are surely something for a healthcare institution to enjoy. Nonetheless, monetizing these processes’ efficiency is evenly important, right? Hospital billing software is nothing else but a platform for ameliorating the profit of your healthcare establishment.
The system features copious integrations with the payment systems and insurance companies, thus ensuring a swift, efficient, and, what is more, legal and compatible profit maximization model. Medical billing software also smoothes up and automates the financial audit, management, and reporting processes. Instead of the many manually-made mistakes in your organization’s financial reports, you get an automated accounting system that prevents your organization from any further legal and fiscal liabilities and, therefore, litigation.
- Telemedicine Software
The imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic need for social distancing has made the healthcare industry run a new course. With the folks separated by social distancing restrictions, a mere visit to a hospital closely related to a death sentence (the media have played their part). Hence, lots of custom healthcare software development companies have faced the need to drive a solution that would help doctors and patients interact without excessive encounters.
The so-called patient-doctor portals are viral these days, as they let patients and doctors chat & meet online. It is incredibly convenient when the patient has a miscellaneous question to ask, as it will take the doctor no more than one minute to answer it. Instead of scheduling a consultation, spending hours commuting to the doctor’s office, the patient ends up with a splendid opportunity to get things done instantly. Those providing their patients with telemedicine platforms get an incredible advantage over their competitors.
This type of software can be deployed to mobile, desktop, and web environments and thus let the patients text and call their doctors, having initially scheduled an online meeting in an embedded appointment system. While copious “experts” claim that telemedicine will become irrelevant as soon as the pandemic is over, we can easily testify to its longevity. It would be a perfect solution for busy hospitals and patients who have no extra hours to spend on the commute to the hospital.
- Inventory Management Software
When it comes to providing top-notch healthcare services, there is a lot of inventory to deal with, and it can get really tricky. Dealing with inventory in the old-school manner, that is, manually, consumes too much time and effort, which could have been otherwise channeled into covering tasks that are more important. Inventory management solutions are cloud-based, meaning they update in real-time. Thus, the personnel is capable of conducting real-time inventory management, preventing them from getting short of supplies in the most critical of times.
For example, imagine a dentist left with no clean gloves when the patient has already arrived. The patient will most likely wait for the doctor’s assistant to go and get a new pair at the chemist, but the impression left would be a rather discrediting one. Make no mistake, this patient will start looking for a new dentist.
- EHR Software
Please, do not confuse it with the hospital information systems. Electronic Health Records have become a tool, a medium that has changed the scope of healthcare services once and forever. This kind of software serves as the platform for unifying the patients’ healthcare records and thus accelerating the diagnosing, decision-making, and treatment accuracy. The EHR systems have been a hit with healthcare providers since the middle of the 2010s. Back in 2017, we could have witnessed that 94% of the American Hospital Association member institutions have already been actively using EHRs.
The EHR systems render patient care integrated and secure, as the patient’s data becomes unified across all the healthcare departments while being stored on various cloud data servers. Thus, it can be accessed and extracted only by the authorized personnel or the patients themselves. That is, those are safety, efficiency, and convenience for both patients and medical personnel that the EHR software brings to the table. Yet, there are two types of EHRs to distinguish between.
Electronic Medical Record Software is used to store the data pertaining to the patients’ medication dosage and types conducted and planned procedures, recoveries, relapses, etc. This is a patient’s unified personal healthcare record that hospitals get access to when the patient undergoes treatment in their establishment.
Electronic Patient Record Software is used by the hospitals to store the data on the patient’s treatment pertaining solely to the operations of the specific healthcare institution. This is a hospital’s internal system for processing their inner in- and out-patient information.
- Medical Research Software
Where there is healthcare, there is research. But for the researchers, we would not have had the COVID-19 vaccine, just like the smallpox vaccine and flu vaccine, and… (shall we continue with the list?). So, it seems like medical researchers could use a bit of software-powered aid, right? Nowadays, we can witness significant advancement in the development of digital platforms designed to serve researchers in copious ways.
For example, medical research software can be used as a repository for medical journals containing mammoth volumes of relevant information as in regards to scientific literature reviews. Furthermore, medical research software can make the most of its integration with an EHR system and thus automate the referral of a patient’s case for further medical research. For instance, a patient with an atypical cancer form won’t have to spend weeks filling in the paperwork, so his or her case could have been trialed and researched, as medical research software accelerates the process significantly.
- Medical Diagnosis Software
There is no need to refrain from the fact that diagnosing the illness rightly from the very beginning is, without a shred of doubt, the most important stage of a patient’s treatment. A good beginning makes a good ending, and we all know that. Software used in medical diagnosis has become a crucial supplement to the hospital’s overall diagnosing agenda, as it enables them to conduct the real-time exchange of information between medical departments and various medical experts. It allows for timely decision-making, which might turn crucial for either saving a person’s life or preventing a patient from developing an aggravated condition.
- Medical Imaging and Visualization Software
Medical imaging and visualization are an important part of diagnosing a peculiar set of diseases. Proper imaging hardware and software can detect all the hidden under human skin tumors, lumps, and structures. To put it bluntly, many conditions would have been incurable without, for example, MRI, one of the most widespread imaging methods. The software used in this scope of medicine helps manage and process the examination data more efficiently, thus significantly smoothing the efficiency of the treatment process.
- Catheterization Lab Software
Software for catheterization laboratories is another kind of soft medical tool that proved vital for saving people’s lives. A catheterization laboratory, also known as a cath lab, is a designated on-purpose examination room in a clinic or hospital, where there is the special equipment for monitoring and visualizing the heart arteries and chambers. The software used in those laboratories helps medical personnel analyze the patients’ medical records, thus facilitating the process of detecting stenosis, or any other abnormalities of the heart. Having swift access to the patient’s medical history can help the doctor define the level of their predisposition for developing a heart condition.
- E-Prescribing Software
It seems like the e-prescribing software has emerged as one more step on the healthcare system’s journey to simplifying the patients’ experience. No more long queues for getting a prescription or a refill from your doctor, as you can get it online. What is more, e-prescribing software prevents unauthorized refills of drug-containing medication, as well as establishing an efficient workflow, cutting the number of prescription errors down, and refining the patient’s record filing. There is no wonder why customer healthcare software development companies are getting to develop so many of those.
- Medical Equipment Management Software
Medical equipment must be kept in proper condition, as even the slightest deviation in the quality of its operation can lead to noxious outcomes. Therefore, the adoption of medical equipment management and maintenance software has been pivotal in the latest health insurance product development endeavors. This software automates the process of equipment maintenance and stocktaking with the help of its inventory and automatic maintenance scheduling alerts.
- Urgent Patient Care Software
You might have heard about the emergency apps, as they have become quite a gem with every healthcare software development company, as well as healthcare providers and patients. These apps are designed to let patients establish urgent communication with their doctor, call for help, or get the answers they need to the health-related questions within minutes. Those apps can also call the ambulance once the patient’s vital indexes fall beyond the acceptable margin and the patient does not call for help themselves.
- Patient Portals
Many folks confuse patient portals with EHR and EMR systems, yet there is quite a vivid distinguishing feature to mention here. Sure, patient portals can be defined as an EHR system, yet they are created to mirror the EHR and EMR systems’ features back to the patients themselves. This is a platform for a patient to enter and trace all their medical data quickly and with minimum fuss. This is a unified database of a person’s medical records, where folks can trace and extract the information needed for sending it to the doctor, as well as looking for the available healthcare providers.
- Patient Engagement Software
Regardless of how awkward it might sound, but we are living in an age when healthcare delivery is nothing else but business. It means that you have to fight for the patients by letting them know why your organization is the best healthcare provider they can turn to. This is why healthcare software development companies are nowadays crafting patient engagement software that facilitates patient encouragement for a whole array of healthcare services. It can be a one-time health check-up or a long-term mutually advantageous patient-doctor relationship. Today’s patients expect more than expert healthcare provision; they want acknowledgment, compassion, immediate communication, and swift access to information. Harnessing the patient engagement software is a proper way to give them it all.
Conclusion
There is quite an abundant choice of healthcare software in the 21st-century’s third decade. Yet, there is surely more to come as it is going to penetrate every single scope of the healthcare industry. It has already revolutionized preventive medicine, while the EHR and EMR systems have become an integral part of the industry’s leading organizations. Given the market forecasts, healthcare software is about to accomplish its hunt for an 8% percent CAGR within the 2018-2023 period. Due to the immense market growth, healthcare providers are left with no other choice but to adopt healthcare software as the ultimate tool for keeping up with customers’ needs.
Make no mistake, in a year or two, we’ll be writing about 30 or even 40 types of healthcare software. Want to know more about healthcare software and how it can benefit your business? Drop us a line! Our experts will be more than happy to answer all your questions absolutely free of charge.
