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Top Benefits of Product Engineering in the Healthcare Industry

Product engineering, in the context of the healthcare industry, refers to the process of innovating, testing, designing and finally deploying software. The modern healthcare ecosystem has undergone a revolution, thanks to Internet of Things (IoT) and product engineering. A seamless integration of IT into the domain of healthcare fosters a better patient engagement, reduces healthcare expenses and makes the healthcare industry transparent at various levels. A statistic reveals that patients in ICU, who were equipped with telehealth, were discharged 20% faster and their mortality rate was lower by 26% than the regular ICU patients. This is just an instance that demonstrates the tremendous potential of product engineering in healthcare. What Problems Can Product Engineering Address? The healthcare industry across the world has been rapidly evolving. With the inception of product engineering, several issues can be addressed. These include: Making the product cycle shorter, so that healthcare products are available faster in the market for sale Change the technology necessary to develop the products from time to time Product viability based on place and language Tackling the market price of the products, which keep rising from time to time Controlling the cost of product maintenance Evidently, product engineering can benefit the healthcare industry to a significant extent. It is already playing a crucial role in maintaining product excellence, dependability, implementation process, and product lifespan. Benefits of Integrating Product Engineering in the Healthcare Industry Today, a large number of start-ups and established firms are working on developing dedicated apps for the healthcare industry. These apps aim to make healthcare affordable and simple. Smartwatches and bands have been some of the early accessories, which have been accepted in the market. Besides, several tools like emergency response systems are being developed for remote monitoring of patients and real-time updates on patients. Technology has shaped the modern healthcare industry to a substantial extent. Have a look at the various benefits of product engineering in the healthcare industry: Cost Management Through product engineering solutions, the medical expenses and costs of insurance can be slashed to a great extent. It takes care of the overall process, right from designing the product, developing the same and validating the software. This enables the customers cope with the product costs. Ensuring Safety Integrating advanced software products in the healthcare industry helps in optimizing the cost. At the same time, the customers need not compromise with the quality of these products. This ensures a greater degree of safety in the products. Addressing Challenges Product sustenance is one of the most demanding aspects within the domain of healthcare. Applying product engineering, it is possible to address these challenges. Companies achieve this goal through various methods like value evaluation of the product, customizing it, value engineering, program localization and so on. Simplifying the Products Keeping healthcare products simple while adhering to the regulatory norms is a challenge for most firms. The developers focus on the requirements of customers and ensure that the products are customized accordingly. Advantages of Time Zone At times, healthcare products that are supplied by the same industry are utilized by people from various locations. In these cases, it is necessary to get the devices and applications customized according to the needs. Product engineering has proved to be an effective solution in these situations. Greater Efficiency The overall efficiency within the healthcare industry has got a boost, with the inception of product engineering. Hospitals and other healthcare organizations benefit from better time management and accurate results, thanks to engineering solutions. In the process, the customers remain contented with the quality of services in the healthcare institution. It is important for the organizations to remain competitive. Product engineering leverages their business by increasing the efficiency. The common areas where product engineering is implemented in the Healthcare industry are: Respiratory devices Radiology apparatus In-vitro devices Monitoring and diagnostic devices Recording devices Therapeutic and healing appliances A study reveals that the market of connected devices is likely to grow to $158.07 billion by 2022, from $41.22 billion in 2017. The digitization of healthcare devices like diabetic insulin pumps, pacemakers and telemedicine devices is ushering a new world of healthcare facilities. These devices are IP addressable and the operation of these connected devices bank on massive volumes of data. However, IT professionals are still addressing issues like evaluating and securing this data. It is possible for the service providers to utilize the data to know the needs of the end users. They can come up with products, considering the customized requirements of the end users. The Use of Advanced Product Engineering in Healthcare You must be familiar with advancements in diagnostics and nuclear medicine. Technologies like organ mapping technology, automatic image enhancement and quantitative imaging tools have enabled healthcare industries to reap the following benefits: Come up with a robust mechanism for fraud analysis Effectively carrying out profile analytics of patients Working on genomic analytics with a greater accuracy Establishing a faster model for R&D Making the treatment process cost-effective by extracting high-quality information from various images The challenges faced by the healthcare industry are numerous. Integrating powerful IoT systems, it is possible to design fool-proof mechanisms. Presently, it is necessary to simplify the solutions, so that the patients can enjoy a better experience within a shorter time-span. It is true, that IoT is gradually penetrating into the healthcare domain, although this growth is not as fast as in other industries. The change is definitely evident through the better-quality healthcare services that patients can enjoy. In the process, the workflow is getting optimized. Device integration and remote monitoring ensure that patients remain safe and enjoy a faster recovery. Partnering the Right Company for Product Engineering It is important to understand the strength and skills of companies that develop these products. Through product engineering, it is possible to assemble tools and develop better quality products. The healthcare firms can enjoy appropriate solutions, on collaborating with the established IT firms. They need to ensure the engineered products suit their requirements and are tailored for a

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Important Tips to Make Your Mobile App HIPAA Compliant

Are you one of those millennials who is fully convinced that ‘living’ has become a lot easier with the introduction to different healthcare apps? Well, you may require making a perception with a pinch of salt as the healthcare mobile apps have their own share of pitfalls as well. One of the major setbacks of such apps has to be their incapability to protect and maintain the privacy of the medical records and personal information of the users. In quest of plugging this loophole, Congress had introduced an act called HIPAA or Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act in the year 1996. However, it’s certainly not a cakewalk to incorporate PHI or Protected Health Information into a mobile device, especially because it always remains susceptible to the risks of being lost, stolen, virus-affected or even hacked. Also, if a mobile device is running on an unsecured Wi-Fi connection, the chances of accidental sharing or transmission of a patient’s confidential medical data via social media or emails will increase by leaps and bounds. This is where the importance of HIPAA compliance comes into play. When a health app is HIPAA compliant, the risk of data-leakage reduces exponentially. Things You Need to Know About HIPAA Compliance The whole point of HIPAA is to provide a health app user with a great deal of security to his/her medical records and personal information. If a patient’s personal info is not safe, it nearly diminishes the whole utility of the healthcare app he/she is relying on. Incorporating HIPAA into a health app can vastly enhance its overall security. HIPAA came into being when the Internet just began to gain popularity and the cursory level of Java version 1 seeped into the soil of computer language. However, before unwrapping the essential facts of HIPAA, it’s important to demystify PHI aka Protected Health Information. As per the US laws, PHI hints at any information that’s related to health, payment for health care, provision of health maintenance, etc. All such information should be gathered by a Business Associate of a Covered Entity and linked to a specific individual. Privacy Rules for HIPAA Compliance There are mainly two privacy rules that describe HIPAA compliance for the covered entities as well as the business associates. The privacy rule describes what qualifies as PHI(Protected Health Information) and also the person who is responsible to ensure that it’s not going to leak any information. The Protected Health Information aka PHI refers to the identifiable medical data transmitted through a medium. This needs not be the information or medical data transmitted or stored by a healthcare provider or a hospital. Any entity, which takes part in storing or transmitting such data, will be liable in this matter. The security rules of medical data specifically associated with the electronic information and also set a guideline for safeguarding PHI. It breaks down the protection methods into the following categories: Administrative Physical Technical Factors Responsible for Securing a Health App Even though, it’s true that keeping a healthcare app protected is not an easy nut to crack, by following some certain tips and tricks this process can be streamlined easily. Here are some of the most essential facts that you should bear in your mind in order to get your mobile application highly safe and secured. These steps are extremely easy to follow and most importantly they are highly effective and 100% result-driven. Have a look: User Authentication Should Be Unique The importance of a strong password is paramount when it comes to protecting a mobile device against several looming threats. There are several factors in play when choosing a password of a mobile device. Selecting a very strong or a rare password is one of the main deciding factors when it comes to password protecting a mobile phone. Using a very easy-to-recognize password can have an adverse effect on the users, leading to a staggering hike in the risk of invasion of privacy or data leakage. Encryption of Personal Data Once collected by a mobile device, the data of a user should be secured at the moment of transmission over different networks. In order to achieve this, a user should incorporate his/her health app with a feature to encrypt the information automatically. There are two levels of creating encryption. The very first step is to store the data on a device temporarily. Another step will be to store them in a server when they are sent over a network. Automatic Logging Off is Essential Sometimes, the users might forget to log out of a health app, which could offer easy access to the PHI stored on a mobile device, in regards to data leakage, loss or theft. In addition to this, it also maximizes the chances of a user’s personal data or medical records to be misused by somebody else, especially if the device is shared. Although the market is thronging with a number of third-party mobile apps that can allow remote control or management of a device to protect a user’s personal data, these may not be accessible for 24X7. Include Remote Wipe Feature into an App Including a wipe feature into a healthcare app will help the users to access and remove their personal health information before these are leaked or misused. Upon being connected to an unprotected network, a mobile device becomes susceptible to the risk of being virus-attacked. A Regular Update Can Be Beneficial This risk could be kept at bay by offering the users frequent alerts and updates on the latest versions of a health app, which will contain the advanced fixes against different online threats and bugs. Audit Logging The importance of log is paramount, especially when it comes to monitoring different activities on a network. Inculcating this feature into a health app will help to audit information like the changes made to the data, the log-in time of the users, the inclusion of a new user, and several other important data, which can aid in the access

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