Make Sure Your Healthcare App is Safe Enough Latest trends reveal that all businesses are taking steps to enter the healthcare app game. Consumer trends reflect that healthcare apps are effective because of the big business they bring to the table. Did you know that Google search for the keyword “healthcare app” brings 210 million entries! Such statistics reflect that the healthcare app is where businesses are heading towards. The market for healthcare apps is fiercely competitive and the safety challenges for the app developers are a lot more critical than the business challenges that the developers face. Always remember that the stakes will remain high because it is the people’s health that we are dealing with. This is primarily because when a person’s messaging app fails in a mobile, no person’s health gets affected. But if the healthcare app fails, the health of a person may get severely affected. The accurate testing of the healthcare apps is a lot more important than the other apps available in the market. The job responsibility of an app developer designing healthcare apps is huge. They are responsible for making the apps compliant, reliable and highly functional.
Difference between Lifestyle and Medical Apps Lifestyle and medical are different categories of healthcare apps and they have their fair share of differences too. These differences are the marketing strategies that you adopt while promoting the apps belonging to the different categories. For instance, the heart rate monitoring app used to check the fitness levels while working out can be termed as a lifestyle app. But the first-response apps for heart problems sending immediate signals in case of heart problems can be termed as a medical app. The precision and accuracy in case of these apps are high on priority. The compliance and regulatory requirements in case of the different categories of apps are vastly different. This does not signal that you can apply a marketing “wash” of lifestyle over the medical devices or apps in order to circumvent the compliance. It is best to understand the category of the apps and frame marketing strategies accordingly.
Healthcare App Features that need to be Tested Testing the quality of apps is quite common and there are different layers of testing that need to be done. These layers include performance testing, vulnerability testing and even functional testing. These layers of testing are considered default and are ‘a must do’ in case of any kind of app testing. For instance, “well, it worked for my phone” is not the ideal kind of testing when you have to test the regulatory and compliance requirements. In case of healthcare apps, certain elements are critical and must be tested. ∑
Security Testing– In the case of healthcare apps, you have control and access to someone’s medical and personal data. In this case, security is a prime requisite. So, the element of security needs to be tested.
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Usability Testing– Intuitive interfaces are extremely important and when medical data is at hand, even for medical professionals, the usability has to be exceptionally good. User experience testing is a priority that needs to be done by experts.
Some important elements that can also be considered for healthcare app testing for mobiles and handheld devices are as follows: ∑
Identified Types of Testing – It is mandatory to make sure that the current healthcare apps run successfully on all iOS and Android devices because consumers use a wide range of Smartphones. To make sure that the apps work well on a wide range of devices, the right combination of manual and auto testing needs to be done.
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Beta Testing– Beta users need to browse through every single page that is present in the mobile app. This makes sure that all the bugs get fixed in the process before the app is released. This also helps in understanding that the app captures all the necessary features and performs all the important functions.
Healthcare testing of the apps is extremely important and even the best of efforts is not considered to be good enough. A failure rate of even 0.01% is considered to be not good enough. So, the precision and accuracy while testing apps need to be on point. The popular demand for healthcare apps has made the need for conducting proper tests important. Apps provide a lot of assistance to healthcare professionals that include information management, maintaining health records and giving access to monitoring patients and providing proper medical training and education.