Why does the Healthcare Industry need Quality Engineering?

The healthcare sector is changing at an unprecedented scale with the adoption of new technologies, devices, and methodologies. It is progressively becoming an all-encompassing service underpinned by the seamless delivery of a superior patient experience. Further, patients want their healthcare experience to be defined by five E’s – Experience, Empathy, Efficiency, Economy, and Empowerment. And this can only be achieved by embracing advanced technologies and creating a strong digital network enabling greater communication, coordination, and decision making. However, these technologies and the software driving them can have quality challenges, compromising the outcomes. It is only through the rigorous application of healthcare software testing guided by quality engineering that such challenges can be effectively addressed. In fact, quality engineering should focus on the following areas:

• Data quality, availability, governance, and platform management

• Data centralization, accuracy, transformation, and integrity across platforms
• Data confidentiality and sensitivity, as per regulatory mandates
• Scalability and device stability
• Availability of services 24 x 7
• Identifying systemic faults
• Network and device security and adhering to policies protecting patient privacy (HITECH, HIPAA)
• Risk compliance

With software development (in healthcare and elsewhere) embracing Agile and DevOps methodologies to facilitate faster releases, healthcare software testing has taken a shift-left approach. Consequently, healthcare QA testing is executed parallel to development for quick identification and remediation of bugs. The sprint-based QA process tests the entire end-to-end system to deliver Continuous Integration (CI) and Continuous Delivery (CD) outcomes. Since there is more focus on ensuring continuous releases, the testers often face challenges in executing regression testing in time. This necessitates the shifting of QA (Quality Assurance) to QE (Quality Engineering), thereby reimagining the healthcare domain testing process. Accordingly, QE tools and methods are used during the ideation, development, and implementation phases to integrate the Voice of the Customer or VOC into the product design.

The testing of innovative products or devices in a highly regulated environment such as healthcare is a challenge of sorts. However, by integrating quality into the design process a la quality engineering, the quality of medical devices can be raised significantly. QE reduces the chances of bugs or glitches getting into the development process, thereby minimizing the effort of testers in ensuring CI and CD. In other words, the organization is better placed to meet the challenges of market pressures and regulation. Let us discuss a few case studies to understand the role of QE for healthcare testing services.

Case study 1 – Telehealth services

The pandemic has brought into sharp focus the utility of telehealth or telemedicine services. Embedded with AI-enabled chatbot functionalities, these services help patients to connect with physicians and other healthcare professionals in real-time. Hence, the functioning of these chatbots should be top-notch given the fact that the lives of patients are dependent on them. With QE, systematic faults in the chatbots can be eliminated, smart automation frameworks can be utilized to facilitate the self-healing of scripts, and strict vigilance in terms of FDA regulations can be maintained.

Case study 2 – Remote health monitoring

Health apps and wearables are gaining importance in the healthcare sector for communicating or transmitting vital information related to patients in real-time. It may include monitoring sleep patterns, heart rate, or blood sugar through easy-to-use IoT-based devices. These vital pieces of information help doctors and paramedics to understand the condition of a patient in real-time and offer a timely cure. However, since these devices are interacting in real-time and do not have developers or testers monitoring their functioning, re-engineering healthcare application testing takes precedence. Accordingly, emphasis is laid on monitoring delays in connecting to devices, validating communication through the operating systems, analyzing production logs through AI, and incorporating (and testing) features such as voice recognition, among others.

Case study 3 – Robotic process automation

Healthcare workers often have to spend hours executing routine repetitive tasks such as documentation. However, automating parts of such tasks can ultimately benefit the workers and allow them to focus on more pressing issues. By incorporating quality engineering into the healthcare QA testing process, automated scheduled batch jobs can be created and data sensitivity of patient records can be ensured.

Conclusion

Since the healthcare sector deals with patients who need a human touch in the delivery of services, the quality of products and the means of delivery should be top-notch. Here, quality engineering as a part of digital transformation testing in healthcare can ensure the development of a patient-centric approach, giving both patients and healthcare professionals a seamless experience.

James Daniel is a software Tech enthusiastic & works at Cigniti Technologies I'm having a great understanding of today's software testing quality