Health-tech is on the rise. Doctors and patients are moving towards telemedicine and other virtual care options after the onset of the pandemic. As a result, the demand for digital health applications has skyrocketed.
Healthcare providers, be it hospitals, clinics, or diagnostics, are developing applications to ease doctor-patient communication and provide personalized care.
Various things go into building a cloud-based clinic or digital health applications. While actual building and coding are the mains, numerous other things need to consider.
This article discusses things needed and the challenges faced in building digital health applications.
LET’S BREAK DOWN THE THINGS THAT NEED TO BE TAKEN CARE OF WHILE BUILDING DIGITAL HEALTH APPLICATIONS:
- Regulatory compliance
The Healthcare sector is full of regulations as it deals with an individual’s personal and private data. The company has to fulfill all the regulatory compliances set up by the government.
The government has also set up Health record IT standards that specify
- Identification and demographic information of the patient
- Architecture requirements and functional specifications
- Logical information reference model and structural composition
- Medical terminology and coding standards
- Data standards for image, multimedia, waveform, document
- Data exchange standards
- Other standards relevant to healthcare systems
- Discharge/treatment summary format
- E-prescription
- Personal healthcare and medical devices interfacing
- Principles of data change
You can read in detail about these standards here.
- Data Interoperability
Data interoperability allows other healthcare providers and digital health applications to access the health data with patients’ consent.
Every digital health application build uses different coding languages and various platforms. But, these applications need to interact with each other to make healthcare easier for both doctors and patients. That’s where interoperability comes in.
With India launching Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission, National Health Stack, and other digital health initiatives, digital health applications need to make their data interoperable. They need to be SMART on FHIR to ensure data interoperability.
Note: FHIR stands for Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources. It is a coding standard to be followed while developing digital health applications. FHIR defines how to store health data and in what format.
SMART means Substitutable Medical Applications and Reusable Technologies. It maintains the security of information shared.
Read more about SMART on FHIR here.
Therefore, digital health applications should help doctors and clinics to collaborate with other healthcare providers. They must also connect with the merging national digital health ecosystem.
- Information and operations management
Digital health applications must flow as per the health provider’s operations in an offline setting. It must ensure proper billing and appointment management.
The application must not be complex but easy to communicate between the doctors and patients.
- Data privacy and security
Digital health applications must ensure data privacy and security. Health information of patients must be gathered, stored, and shared in accordance with government compliances.
With patients being the data owners, the applications must allow them to share these health data safely with other doctors, friends, and family.
Digital health applications must be developed and updated to meet the ever-changing technology and rules and regulations.
CHALLENGES FACED WHILE BUILDING DIGITAL HEALTH APPLICATIONS:
- Complex and conventional design of healthcare data
Healthcare data has a complex and conventional approach. It is predominately textual and descriptive that needs to be coded and made computable. The Clinical data builds on a traditional architecture that is becoming obsolete.
- Frequent changes in technology and regulations, and architecture
Technology and regulations are forever changing. Digital health applications need to be built on a smart architecture that can manage the dichotomy seamlessly.
- Health data ownership
Digital health applications are not the owners of health data. They are custodians. Hence, they need to manage the data on behalf of the patients, allowing the patients to share their data securely with consent.
Companies developing digital health applications need to address the challenges thrown by emerging health care markets. They need to approach the market with new out-of-the-box strategies that challenge traditional methods.
