Testing expenses can take up 40% of the overall software development budget. You shouldn’t be surprised by such figures. How so? Because testing is, arguably, the most quality-defining process for your product. And for healthcare applications, QA can literally be the difference between life and death.
So, today, let’s talk about how you can make sure that your software is tested outstandingly well and what your team should know to do it.
When it comes to healthcare software testing services, there are many overlapping aspects and similarities. But to create an exceptional product is to know its specifics. So, whether you’re developing a web app or a medical device, testing needs to be tailored to the unique characteristics of each. Let’s review how this works on a few examples.
For web apps, focus on:
For healthcare mobile app testing, the priorities are:
For desktop software, center on:
And for medical devices, emphasize:
These instances don’t mean that these are the only aspects you should test. It’s more about paying increased attention to elements that users find critical. For example, you wouldn’t spend too much time on functional UI testing for healthcare app. Instead, you’d emphasize verifying that a diagnostic imaging device can efficiently share results with an EHR system.
Such a nuanced approach to testing ensures that healthcare technology meets the highest standards of functionality, usability, and safety.
Comparatively, software types’ particularities aren’t much of a hurdle when you consider the ecosystem of healthcare apps. For instance, these are the most popular options in 2024:
Proper healthcare software quality assurance calls for a careful analysis of an app’s features. Good testing depends on functionality knowledge and, to some extent, business goals.
So, we can’t dive into what apps need this or that testing more (that would take a hot minute). But we can outline tests without which healthcare software simply wouldn’t be.
These are just a few functionalities without which healthcare software wouldn’t even go beyond “acceptable” quality. There are many more features that vary across app types and categories. So, you shouldn’t forget about advanced or highly specific attributes either. For instance:
All in all, testing healthcare applications is like completing a puzzle game. Only when all the pieces are perfectly aligned – compliance, functionality, and user-friendliness – the software can evoke that feeling of satisfaction and pride.
Let’s take a break from the technical side of software. What do you need to ensure that your app is tested well? We have three words for you:
Knowledge secures a unified understanding of your software, its uniqueness, and how to make an irresistible product. Strategy helps make sure that you have an optimized roadmap to your goals. Expertsz ensure that everything is done to the highest degree of excellence, from collaboration to project quality.
We’ll begin with the resources you’ll need to build a result-driven testing process.
Requirements serve as the foundation document. They outline the functionalities and requirements of the healthcare app.
An SSR document for a telemedicine app details feature specifications for, say, video consultation, appointment scheduling, and secure patient data transmission.
A QA strategy provides an overarching approach for quality assurance. It encompasses methodologies, tools, and resources used during testing.
When testing a healthcare software app, it might emphasize regulatory compliance, interoperability, and security testing to ensure data confidentiality.
A test plan delineates the scope, objectives, resources, schedule, and overall approach to testing.
For an EHR system, a test plan may detail the phases of testing, such as unit testing for individual modules, integration testing for seamless data flow, and user acceptance testing (UAT) for end-to-end validation.
A test strategy outlines the high-level testing approach. It includes the types of testing, resources, and schedule.
A test strategy for a medical device may define the strategy for performance testing to ensure the device accurately captures and transmits real-time patient data under varying loads.
Test cases provide detailed scenarios and steps to be executed during testing to validate specific functionalities.
For a pharmacy app, a test case may outline steps to test, for example, the prescription refill process. It’d include verifying the correct scanning of prescriptions, accurate medication information display, and successful order placement.
A checklist serves as a quick reference for critical items to be verified during testing, ensuring comprehensive coverage.
A checklist for a mental health app may include items like validating therapist matching algorithms, confirming secure data storage, and testing crisis intervention features.
Side note: you don’t need both test cases and checklists. It’s either this or that, depending on your needs.
Understanding these test artifacts’ goals is crucial for a systematic testing process. So, if you need a refresher for your grasp of testing documentation – give our article on testing documentaion a read.
As for the knowledge your team should have to increase the chances of creating an awe-inspiring app, consider the point below. They outline aspects of healthcare software that ought to become the holy grail of your testing efforts.
While these aspects should be the main focus of testing, you should note that they are also incredibly difficult to perfect. Why is that? Because healthcare software is exceptionally intricate. And making it as close to the ideal as possible entirely depends on the specialists in your team.
We go into more detail on how expert knowledge helps overcome the challenges of healthcare software testing in the previous post addressing healthcare QA challenges.
Now, to make sure that all your plans are carried out exactly as you envision them, you need the right people. Building effective QA for healthcare app involves assembling a diverse set of specialists. Precisely what roles you need will depend on project complexity, budget and deadlines, phase of life cycle, etc.
So, at this moment, consider these essential specialists and what they can do for you:
#1 Manual QA Engineer – runs manual healthcare app testing, ensuring a comprehensive evaluation.
#2 Automation QA Engineer – develops automated testing (AT) scripts to expedite repetitive testing processes.
#3 General QA Engineer (manual + AT) – combines manual and automated testing expertise for a holistic strategy.
#4 Test Manager – oversees the testing process, ensuring alignment with project goals and timelines.
#5 Release Manager – coordinates the release process, managing deployments and ensuring smooth transitions.
#6 QA Lead – governs the QA team, overseeing testing strategies and providing guidance.
Each specialist in the testing team plays a distinct role. But only collaborative efforts secure a remarkable healthcare app. So, choose your experts wisely.
If you decide to cooperate with a QA company, especially if you’re doing it for the first time, pay attention to how they begin the work. It’s not a few specialists jumping on your project and figuring stuff out as they go. Everything, from your first meeting to post-release procedures, should be agreed upon in advance.
Let’s overview how testing software applications should go using QA Madness’s model as an example.
The very first meeting should work as sort of a “vibe check.” Your potential QA outsource crew should get to know your product, needs, and goals. In turn, you ought to learn more about their abilities, expertise, and modes of cooperation. At this stage, you should also settle on an estimate to plan your budget.
Tip: ask if the QA team has experience working with healthcare software. On its own, it’ll be a huge benefit. Yet, it will also let you know how the organization approaches projects that need more than a “traditional” testing method.
After the preliminary aspects are worked out, define exactly what you need the QA team to do. And don’t be shy – tell them everything: what you expect of them, how you’d like everything to be done, and when. Identify the scope, objectives, and resources required for testing. This stage will serve as the backbone for your cooperation.
Tip: if you haven’t worked with a QA company before, ask for a comprehensive consultation or a QA lead. Both will help you devise a better strategy, such as what and how to test, how many specialists you’ll need, etc.
This stage is very important. And if your QA partner doesn’t show involvement here – drop them. To realize your vision for the product, the team should understand the app’s functionalities, user base, and key features. For a healthcare project, not having an in-depth grasp of its specifics is like looking for a needle in a pool of other needles.
Tip: don’t view this phase as a waste of time or try to rush it. Sure, the team must adhere to the deadlines. But for medical software, it’s better to spend some time to truly understand it instead of getting to testing right away. In the case of the latter, you’ll spend even more resources on going back to fix everything that was missed.
Here, the QA team should provide you with documentation that details who will work on what, what they will test, how they will provide reports, etc. And remember, this needs your full approval. In other words, take the provided documentation with a grain of salt and make sure it suits your expectations.
Tip: secure the involvement of project stakeholders in this stage. They will help modify the testing process to better fit project goals, timelines, and resources.
This is the active stage of your collaboration. The QA team executes test cases and presents real-time reports on identified bugs, bigger issues, and improvement ideas.
Tip: create a fast feedback loop between QA specialists and developers. It’ll help speed up testing and guarantee better outcomes via continuous dialogue.
When the QA team identifies bugs and the dev crew amends them, always go for retesting and regression. They ensure that any modifications to the application don’t break the product and actually improve it.
Tip: never skip regression. For healthcare projects especially, rechecking everything twice is better than ending up with a compliance violation or a buggy interface that frustrates users.
After you’re done with the bulk of the work, secure the final assessment. It’ll help make sure that everything goes as you want it to. And if something isn’t working out, this is the time to make adjustments to the testing process.
Tip: testing in production might be a magnificent advantage for healthcare apps. It lets you “conduct an in-depth product review in a real-world setting”. Yet, you should also be aware of the risks this process has. You can find out more about them in one of our earlier articles about testing in production.
Testing doesn’t end after the product goes live. In fact, it should never end at all. Only via continuous testing you can better your product and reach new heights. The good thing is that you don’t have to start anew. You proceed with what you have and focus on iterative testing, documentation updates, and continuous improvement in subsequent sprints.
Tip: make sure you establish a robust knowledge base. Everything the QA team has done and documented will help you with project advancement and insight transfer to keep product standards the same and rising.
Last but not least, let’s talk about money. When you’re working on healthcare software, you should be prepared to invest comparatively more into it. But we don’t say this just so that you spend more. On the contrary. You ought to plan your budget in advance and account for the factors that may increase the overall testing cost.
So, beware that you might need to expend more if your project:
You can find many ways to optimize your software development in terms of expenses. Just remember not to compromise quality.
Testing healthcare applications is a multifaceted process. And only by understanding the nuances of testing such projects, you can achieve unprecedented results. It sure won’t be easy. But in the end, it will be worth it. So, choose your QA strategy and team carefully. Because this will probably be the decision that determines your product’s fate.
Software testing is the process of evaluation a software item to detect differences between given input and expected output. Software testing is a process that should be done during the development process. In other words, software testing is a verification and validation process.
This article is devoted to highlighting the most popular software testing tools nowadays.
Here are some important tools to test the performance, load and stress of the website/application. These tools ensure that your website/application will run under high performance and less load & stress.
Apache JMeter is a 100% pure Java desktop application designed to load test functional behavior and measure performance...
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