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Although technology in the medical field began largely due to healthcare institutions, medical technology can now be seen applied in smaller offices allowing practitioners to simplify processes and provide high-quality service.
Truth is that technology brings a great deal of advantages, comfort, and accessibility – and it is no different for the medical industry.
As a health institution, the service you provide extends to any interaction your patients have with you, your staff or your company, in general. From making appointments to getting all of their questions answered, from sharing their health data to offering different ways to consume health information, patients expect the best possible service from their healthcare providers. Using medical software allows health care providers to manage most of the elements of their daily tasks easily and quickly by leveraging technology to increase the growth, performance, and sustainability of their practice.
50% of consumers say they would like to see scheduling appointments more digitized.
59% of people say organizations have lost touch with the human element of customer experience.
What are Medical Software Applications?
In essence, medical software is any and all software applications used in a medical context. This means that from managing patient information to image processing and everything in between is considered to be medical software. To be more specific, the most common types of medical software applications are:
- Electronic Health Record (EHR) Software
- Medical Database Software
- Medical Practice Management Software
- Medical Imaging Software
- Prescribing Medical Software
- Healthcare CRM
- Telemedicine Medical Software
And who are these used by? The key medical software users are:
- Private Medical Practices
- Diagnostic laboratories
- Physicians
- Pharmacists
How Can Medical Software Be Helpful for You?
By storing, managing and transmitting patient information, medical software is the best way to help you improve efficiency, reducing operating errors and offering a better service day-to-day. Having more time due to task automation, medical applications give you the opportunity to focus on your patients and enhance your operations.
Keep in mind that there’s a lot of competition in terms of medical software available. You should find the one that best suits your business necessities as each one satisfies a different need. Let’s cover some of them. If you still feel it isn’t enough, keep in mind that customization is always an option.
5 Most Common Types of Medical Software
An essential part of providing top-notch service by taking advantage of the technology in the medical industry is implementing applications in your practices where you can store, merge, edit, and share patient information and health records. Creating a database of patients and their health information is not only an eco-friendlier approach but also makes your and your patients’ lives easier. By leveraging the power of medical technology, the health industry is able to enhance administration and patient outcomes.
1. ELECTRONIC HEALTH RECORD (EHR) SOFTWARE
An electronic health record (EHR) application is one of the most common medical software available. It’s best known as the digital version of a patient’s paper chart. It contains detailed information about patients such as demographics, laboratory results, allergies and everything collected over time. By using an EHR software development solution, providers are able to better manage patient information.
One of the best attributes of this medical application is that providers can create, manage and share information with other providers and organizations involved in a patient’s care such as laboratories, clinics, medical imaging and so on. How much better would the service you provide your service be if you had all of this information at your fingertips? Not only is an EHR an organizational tool, but through it, a full network of practitioners providing a faster and more reliable service than ever before.
Radconnect, a platform that makes it possible to store radiology images safely and share them securely in case there’s a need for a second opinion, is an example of an EHR. Patients don’t have to leave their homes, go from hospital to hospital carrying their radiology images – they can simply share the information via Radconnect.
2. MEDICAL DATABASE SOFTWARE
In the medical field, service can easily expand beyond the regular appointment or scheduled visit, and can even transcend from one patient to another. In that sense, medical databases go further than the individual as they enable health providers to enter patients’ data into digital platforms for the greater good. And that’s their main difference from EHRs. In medical databases, all the information is classified in terms of disease categories and end-up being a point of reference to previous cases for the purpose of medical research. This enables a better experience for future cases and ensures the ever-growing medical network remains strong.
TorsoCAD is a great example of medical database software. This is a desktop and mobile application that allows its users to create a database of patients and edit general information about them, created using Java and cross platform solutions.
3. MEDICAL PRACTICE MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE
When speaking about medical practice management software particularly, we can say that it was made to take care of manual duties such as data entry or appointment scheduling, as well as clinical, financial and administrative functions, to ensure smooth operations of medical facilities. Accurate documentation of patient information, including admissions, medication reports, billing, and appointments, to name a few can be automated by medical practice software management.
MPMs are really the epitome of great customer service in the medical field – at least as far as patients are concerned. Today, patients are more interested in mobile click-to-chat and click-to-call, which reduces their time waiting on hold, repeating information, and having to talk to multiple people. It’s truly about patient support as best as new-age standards allow and medical offices using such tools really see a difference in user satisfaction.
“Think of medical practice management (MPM) as the Jarvis to your Iron Man.”
An example of this type of medical tool is the mobile app, Medical Records Tracker, which securely stores and organizes health records, medication schedules, and doctors’ appointments. Created with software development tools such as Bootstrap and Cordova, Medical Records Tracker helps family members and care providers be on top of healthcare regimens for multiple people with calendar integrations and timely mobile alerts.
3. MEDICAL IMAGING SOFTWARE
In a more medically technical way, medical imaging software is one of the most used tools within the industry. Medical diagnosis inside the body is supposed to be challenging but medical imaging software sure makes it easier. As you may know, these are tools that produce visual representations of the body to diagnose any problems and follow accurate treatments.
From radiography, dental images, magnetic resonance imaging to nuclear medicine and ultrasound, there’re tons of healthcare areas that are benefited by the technology advances of medical software. For example, FastPacs Dicom is a DICOM medical imaging application that allows medical professionals to archive, view, and edit DICOM images with an intuitive user interface using a web-based image server and FDA-certified iQ-VIEW review workstation.
4. PRESCRIBING MEDICAL SOFTWARE
Doing everything from the comfort of our own homes is never as important as when you have an illness. In reality, one could assume that the goal of technological advances is not to cater to those who just don’t want to get up off the coach but perhaps those that just can’t. Fortunately, today there are many mobile applications that simplify the process of getting prescriptions and receiving lab results for customers. Some platforms even let users shop for healthcare services – they don’t need to ask a friend for a reference anymore. This extra mile for the medical industry is truly one to cherish, and offering your services through just a platform may be the diversification your practice needed.
One of those apps is RokketMed – an online marketplace that provides locations, prices, and consumer reviews to the users via an aggregator delivery model. It aims to help consumers understand the various providers they could visit depending on what they are suffering from.
5. TELEMEDICINE MEDICAL SOFTWARE
The internet has changed the medical industry, and today, telemedicine isn’t just used to connect doctors, but also to offer remote clinical care to patients. We can safely say that telemedicine can help doctors provide high-quality service to their patients. Telemedicine enables medical providers to treat their patients remotely using tools like video chats, phone, and email. For example, TeleRadiology allows radiologists to practice and interpret medical images while they are not physically at the location where the images are formed, helping speed things up for patients.
Tomer Gofer, CEO of Vaica said, “Telehealth solutions for home diagnostics are leading the way for patients to receive top-quality care from their physicians in the comfort and privacy of their own homes.” With that in mind, let’s go over some software examples.
Custom vs. Ready-Made Medical Solutions
Making a decision about how to integrate medical imaging software development a difficult one: there are so many factors that need to be taken into consideration. One thing to keep in mind is that your medical practice is unique. One thing to keep in mind is that your medical practice is unique. This means that you should first think about what great service means to you! Whether that is offering automatic appointment confirmations via SMS or having patient records stored nicely. This will certainly mark the difference and help you understand which type of medical platform can help you achieve that goal.
Additionally, if you have a small medical practice, choosing a simple single-purpose system medical software can be enough to fulfill all your needs. On the other hand, when big health institutions such as hospitals, diagnostic laboratories, pharmacies, and others decide to implement single-purpose systems and end up having to add several other
systems, it only makes things more complicated: having pieces of information everywhere and having to learn multiple systems can be a hassle.
Custom healthcare software development services will cost you more at the beginning but will save you a lot of time later on when they cater to all your needs. Ready-made solutions work best when there are not very many requirements, and everything is straight forward. So, a strategic long-term decision will be implementing a practice management software in your operations that are integrated with other medical software.
We can never guess the future 100% accurately, but we can surely make predictions. Experts say that advancements that we’ll see soon in the medical industry will be related to 3D printing and AI. Are you following medical technology trends? Then you probably have a great idea of your own. Let’s create the next medical solution that will revolutionize the way patients receive health care and help provide top-notice service in the medical industry.
