Healthcare Software

Types of Healthcare Software

The healthcare industry is well-known to many as a busy and time-consuming work environment. Healthcare professionals and practitioners talk of being constantly pressured and pressed for time, especially when it comes to performing and accomplishing all of their tasks within a single 8-hour workday.

There are many different types of healthcare software solutions. Some are comprehensive and are designed to cover a wide range of functions. Others are tailored to deliver specific features and capabilities to facilitate a certain aspect of a medical service provider’s daily task assignments. There are also software tools designed to automate repetitive tasks—some are geared towards management purposes, others for security, and so on.

Health and safety software

Health and safety is a significant part of the healthcare service industry. Any healthcare service provider, medical practitioner, or healthcare professional needs a reliable and effective tool to track health and safety incidents.

Health and safety software solutions are applications that allow users to efficiently track the mental and physical wellbeing of employees in the workplace. Such software systems document incidents and provide useful analysis in an effort to uncover valuable insights that help to reduce the likelihood of them recurring in the future.

Software solutions that belong in this category often come with certain features such as incident management, risk assessment, and action-tracking capabilities.

Healthcare management information systems

Healthcare management information systems, or HMIS, are software solutions designed to improve patient satisfaction through effective tracking of the various aspects of the healthcare service process that each specific patient experiences.

HMIS solutions help users, medical practitioners, and healthcare providers to provide better quality service by getting the right data and up-to-date information provided or expressed by the medical service recipients themselves. As such, these software solutions allow businesses and healthcare establishments to accurately compare perceptions of services provided against the facility’s anticipated service benchmarks.

The main purpose of HMIS solutions is to gather and sort critical data on health events and assess the service quality at varying grades of healthcare, thus efficiently monitoring the service experience of patients and clients.

Electronic health record management software

Healthcare facilities, service providers, medical practitioners, and professionals deal with a plethora of patients on a daily basis. In order to stay on top of files, sensitive information, and record keeping, a robust and reliable health record management system is necessary.

Electronic health record management software solutions are designed to help healthcare facilities and health professionals manage the crucial health records of patients in a secure and efficient way. These types of systems are typically dedicated solutions with the capability to store patient records up-to-date within a centralized and secure database.

Some electronic health record software solutions are capable of facilitating implementation, on-boarding, and setup processes, as well as billing and payment processing. They also generally come with customer support services.

Patient communication software

For any healthcare professional, practitioner, or medical service provider, communicating with patients is a time-consuming but necessary component in the healthcare industry. It’s crucial for patients to be able to communicate with their healthcare providers and vice versa.

Patient communication software solutions are designed to provide an easy and stable communication platform for patients and healthcare practitioners. Patients will be able to contact clinics and healthcare facilities to book or cancel appointments, ask important questions, provide feedback, and so on.

The number of patients that healthcare professionals and facilities deal with on a daily basis makes having a patient communication platform that much more important, especially when it has the capability to automate key processes and increase the efficiency and productivity of the facility’s staff.

Imaging and visualization software

Imaging and visualization are vital aspects of any medical process. As such, having the ability to obtain image and visualization data is undoubtedly a crucial part of any medical practice.

Imaging and visualization software solutions are not exactly the type of software that deals with administrative tasks. However, they do come with certain features that enable healthcare practitioners to properly manage and store imaging and visualization data of patients and organize them in such a way that is easy to access and view for future reference.

These types of solutions will enable users to incorporate X-rays, CT scans, and MRI scans to patient records to make patient histories more comprehensive for physicians and medical practitioners. Such applications allow for easy access and sharing with other physicians and healthcare facilities. They also help to reduce human errors and misplaced records.

How to Choose Healthcare Software

There are many different healthcare software solutions on the market. Some of them are designed to facilitate specific tasks, while others are more comprehensive in nature and may cover a wide range of functions, from patient records management to communications and workflow management solutions.

Choosing the right healthcare software solution for your healthcare practice involves three crucial factors that need to be considered—user understanding, technology requirements, and regulatory requirements.

The first critical factor you need to consider is the user. What type of users are you expecting to use the software solution? When understanding your users, take into account these key factors: research dimensions and methodologies, the varying needs of stakeholders, usage of research data, and the medical field or practice you are operating in.

The next crucial factor to consider is your technology requirements. Identify what your healthcare practice needs and find the right technology that suits that particular practice. Choose the right frameworks and infrastructure, consider the development process, and take into account the size of data you will be dealing with in your facility.

Finally, make sure to consider the regulatory requirements when choosing healthcare software solutions. Think of interoperability, the balancing of privacy with usability, and the compliance of regulatory standards like HIPAA.

Benefits of Healthcare Software

The healthcare service industry can be an overwhelming and high-pressure working environment for professionals and practitioners. For patients seeking good quality medical services, it can be quite daunting and time-consuming as well.

Having the right healthcare software will not only help healthcare facilities and practitioners provide good quality service, it will also help to improve patient satisfaction. Such software solutions will help make managing patient information, booking appointments, and managing staff easier and more efficient. They also help to improve staff efficiency and productivity.

Common Features of Healthcare

API	Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) are programmatic intersections with external products or platforms that allow for custom integrations with your own solutions or other solutions you are using.
Athlete Management	Manage athlete information records for organizations and teams.
Calendar Management	Manage and update calendars for scheduling or consolidation of events across teams, departments or business functions.
Customer Management	Manage customer databases and/or track outstanding shipments, payments and more.
Dashboard	Dashboards are digital interfaces commonly used to visualise data or give quick access to important features and functions of online platforms. They often serve as an overview gateway in software applications.
Data Export	Exporting functionality can be used to streamline the migration of data sets and information across systems, platforms or applications.
Data Import	Importing functionality allows you to use data sets from other systems or platforms to cut down on data entry requirements or to more easily migrate records from similar applications you have used in the past.
Data Visualization	Data visualization features render a visual interpretation of data sets through the use of charts, infographics and other visual cues generally in form of a reporting dashboard.
External Integrations	Integrations with other software products or platforms to improve efficiency and compatibility across systems.
File Sharing	Share files with colleagues, customers or other stakeholders for easier access across platforms, collaboration and/or version control.
File Transfer	Transfer large files to colleagues, customers or other stakeholders. This is often used for files too large to transfer via email and other conventional transmission methods.
Inventory Tracking	Stay on top of inventory levels, to manage the storing, reordering or production of stock items.
Multi-User	Supports more than just one user account and generally allows for collaboration with colleagues.
Notifications	Includes notification support and sends you alerts with information on important events and other time sensitive instances. For example through push notifications on mobile phones or email notifications.
Organization Management	High level organization management features to streamline the operation of your business.
Project Management	Manage projects from conception through the planning stage to delivery and post-project reporting phases. This allows organisation teams to organise resources, plan budgets and improve efficiency in the delivery of project objectives.
Scheduling	Schedule tasks, resources, appointments, payments, communications, etc.
Supplier Management	Manage suppliers and purchases required in the day-to-day operation of a business.