How to Create Hospital Management Software
Challenges brought by high patient volumes, bureaucracies, and outdated healthcare management practices are common among hospitals and healthcare centers across the U.S. The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic worsened these issues and forced healthcare systems to find solutions. Hospitals had to change their approach and adopt modern practices to improve patient care and service delivery.
Adopting healthcare management software is among the many effective solutions that saved the impending crisis. The introduction of these systems aligns with the increasing demand for adopting technological solutions to healthcare systems. According to healthcare experts, the market for digital solutions in the healthcare industry will increase from $31.6 million to $99 million by 2030.
Fortunately, creating hospital management software isn't as challenging as many expect. Modern tools have made it easy for developers to create platforms that were initially thought to be complicated. For instance, using job board software has made it easy for companies to create a job board with basic coding knowledge. You can also use similar techniques in creating hospital management software.
Understanding the Hospital Management Software Concept
Hospital management systems are:
- Essentially digital systems that simplify hospital activities.
- Ranging from appointment processes.
- Patient information.
- Billing.
- Scheduling to regulatory compliance.
These systems also simplify staff and workload distribution and collaboration between various departments. A successful hospital management software should have the following key features:
Patient registration and record management
An effective hospital management software should feature an electronic health record, which stores patient details digitally. Storing patient data in one location makes it easy to access. Manual data entry is time-consuming and increases the risks of human errors.
A good HMS should have a template that allows clinicians and medical service providers to create patient profiles for different healthcare services. It should also allow sharing of patient profiles among healthcare service providers, including clinicians, lab personnel, and pharmacies, to streamline service delivery.
Appointment scheduling and calendar management
An excellent health management system should have a scheduling feature for patients and doctors. Patients should easily view the available hours, schedule an appointment with a physician, and get notified of any other open slot.
On the other hand, doctors should be able to reserve the next appointment during the patient's visit. The system should send a text or app notification to the doctor and the patient once the appointment is booked. However, this feature heavily relies on calendar integration.
Billing and insurance processing
Healthcare billing is a crucial aspect of healthcare systems. A healthcare management system should make it easy for hospital administrators to monitor the facility's finances, taxes, patient bills, revenues, and other expenses. The system should also have insurance service integration, which allows patients to process their insurance details before seeing a doctor.
The system should capture the patients' insurance details, such as insurance company, policy number, and policy provisions. Other nice-to-have features include tracking patient bills, an automated treatment costs calculator, and more.
Inventory and asset management
Hospitals and healthcare institutions rely on various supplies and resources for day-to-day functioning. Shortage of crucial supplies can hinder effective service delivery. As such, a hospital management system should make it easier for medical personnel to monitor their inventory and predict future requirements for early restocking.
Staff and human resource management
A hospital management system should also simplify staffing and human resource management. Staffing is a crucial determinant of service delivery in hospitals. As such, the system should make it easy for human resource managers to meet specific staffing needs of various departments.
Reporting and analytics
Reports and analytics are a good source of valuable insights that administrators can use to improve service delivery. A good HMS should provide reports on patient attendants, doctors, and the hospital's financial status. Administrators should easily evaluate the performance of various clinics, practitioners, and other departments.
Identifying the target audience
As with other applications, software developers should understand the target audience before embarking on software development. Software developers cannot coordinate their efforts, choose appropriate technology, identify potential pain points, and find accurate solutions without knowledge of the target audience. The target audience for HMS includes:
- Hospital administrators and managers – Financer, HR, and accounts personnel should only have access to basic patient information.
- Healthcare professionals – Doctors, nurses, surgeons, laboratory staff, and other healthcare personnel should access detailed patient information. They are the key audience of a hospital management system.
Planning and Designing the Hospital Management Software
Software developers should consider the following when planning and designing a hospital management system:
1. Market research and competitor analysis
Comprehensive market research will help developers uncover valuable information about the general healthcare industry. Market research for hospital management systems should focus on the following:
- Studying industry trends and successful software solutions – The development team should research industry trends and identify previous software solutions developed to address these healthcare challenges. This also involves checking out inceptions by industry leaders, such as Siemens Healthineers, to ensure the development of valuable HMS that addresses present needs.
- Identifying unique selling points and niche markets – A market analysis should also involve understanding the target market and identifying the software's unique selling point. This means finding specific features that will differentiate the software under development from others available on the market.
2. Defining software requirements and functionalities
The second stage in planning and designing a healthcare management system is identifying software requirements and critical functionalities. This essentially includes:
- User stories and feature prioritization – A hospital management system should be designed around various vital features. The general target audience is looking for an HMS that allows seamless patient registration and billing, outpatient process management, consultation management, diagnostics management, workforce management, and more.
- Design mockups and wireframes – Mockups and wireframes are common software development terms. Software developers often use several planning tools to iterate development ideas and possible solutions. Design mockups and wireframes are two standard tools that can help developers create basic visual outlines of the HMS. Wireframes are skeletal blueprints that outline the design and functionality of the software. On the other hand, mockups provide an in-depth description of the wireframe.
3. Selecting the right technology stack
The last step in planning a hospital management system development is choosing the right technology stack. Software development typically involves front-end and back-end development. Developers should also select suitable databases and hosting solutions.
MVC Frameworks for developing HMS
Some commonly used frameworks for developing hospital management software include:
Laravel
Key features:
- The simple but powerful routing engine
- Real-time event broadcasting
- Multiple back-ends for cache storage
- Reliable background job processing
Symfony
Key features:
- Structured MVC architecture
- Pre-established directory structure
- Accurate Symfony profiler
- Multiple PHP libraries
NodeJS
Key features:
- Scalable software development framework
- Asynchronous and event-driven
- Single-threaded
- Quick code execution
- Fast data streaming
Spring (Java)
Key features:
- Inversion of control container
- Supports aspect-oriented programming
- Simplified data-access framework
- Streamlined spring web service
Front-end and back-end technologies
Front-end and back-end are common software development terms. Front-end development is what the HMS users will interact with, while the back-end is the complex operation of how things work. The front end includes navigating menus, layouts, texts, pictures, videos, and other visual aspects of the software. Both sides should communicate and complement each other.
Unlike other industries, front-end and back-end development in the healthcare domain is quite complicated. It has strict regulations, requirements, and standards, which differ among states and countries. Before embarking on developing hospital management software, developers should understand the healthcare ecosystem of the target country.
The team should ensure front-end design aligns with the user environment. For instance, are they designing a system for a small clinic or a busy medical center? Regardless, they should avoid redundant tabs, complex functionality, and flashy software design, as they can distract healthcare workers. A minimalistic design makes navigating the system easy for doctors and other healthcare personnel.
Database and hosting solutions
Database and hosting solutions are the backbones of software functionality. A database essentially stores different sets of data, which is the primary component of a hospital management system. Developers should prefer a database over simple data storage systems for software development for the following reasons:
- Ease of access – A database makes data available to all users. The target user can store large amounts of data, and multiple users can access and modify data simultaneously.
- Integrity – Databases have effective data backup, redundancy, and distribution mechanisms to prevent data loss.
- Security – Databases are more secure than spreadsheets and other simple data storage options.
Similarly, developers should choose a hosting solution for their hospital management software. Hosted systems can be accessed online, making information easier for users from different departments. It is a perfect option for hospitals with different branches communicating remotely as they can't depend on internal servers.
Developing the Hospital Management Software
With these prerequisites in place, developers can proceed to the next step, which is the actual development of hospital management software. The steps include:
1. Assembling the development team
Interestingly, development projects can fail due to discord in the software development team. Below are a few things to should consider when assembling the development team:
- In-house vs. outsourced development – After determining important software development needs, lead developers should start by deciding whether to proceed with an in-house team or outsource development. The in-house team essentially involves capitalizing on the internal teams' skills and experience. On the other hand, outsourcing requires hiring external developers or third-party agencies to handle the development phase. Both approaches have pros and cons that should be evaluated carefully before deciding.
- Key roles and responsibilities – The software development team should have clearly defined roles and responsibilities. A typical development team should include a business analyst, project manager, product designer, software developer, UX/UX designer, testing engineer, and DevOps engineer, all with specific duties.
Assembling a perfect development team for the in-house option requires extensive analysis of various factors. For instance, choosing a team structure that best suits the development needs should be a priority. The lead developer should choose between specialists, general developers, and a hybrid team. The preferred structure depends on several factors, including the complexity of the software, deadlines, and allocated budget.
2. Implementing the development process
With the team in place, the team should get down to the development process. Below are a few tips that can simplify the phase:
- Agile development methodology – Choosing the correct software development methodology is a challenge. However, most teams choose agile methodology over waterfall, rapid, lean, extreme, and feature-driven options because it fits a hospital management software development.
- Development milestones and timelines – Having software development milestones increases the chances of success. Milestones help gauge the progress of the project and identify potential bottlenecks.
3. Quality assurance and testing
Adopting rigorous quality assurance and testing protocol helps ascertain the accuracy and functionality of the software. Testing should be done to ensure the software meets usability and performance requirements. Important tests to conduct include:
- Functional testing and user acceptance testing are designed to verify that the software works as expected. Similarly, acceptance tests are done to confirm that the software solves user problems.
- Security and performance testing – These are crucial for any software, especially hospital management software, as it stores confidential patient data. Security tests uncover software vulnerabilities and risks to prevent future attacks from malicious persons. Performance testing is done to determine the software's speed, stability, responsiveness, and scalability.
Launching and Marketing the Hospital Management Software
If the hospital management software passes quality assurance and testing protocols, the team should prepare to launch it into the market. Below are a few launching and marketing tips for HMS:
Pre-launch activities
Important pre-launch activities for hospital management software and other applications include:
- Beta testing and gathering user feedback – Alpha and beta testing are crucial for product success and adoption. Beta testing is essentially a user-acceptance test rolled out to a group of users to assess the performance of the software. Beta testing evaluates the software's performance in a real-life environment and gathers feedback for improvement before the official launch.
- Finalizing the software for public release – The team should then finalize the software before launch. Finalization activities should essentially be based on feedback gathered from beta tests.
Marketing and promotion strategies
The lead developer should consider various marketing strategies for the HMS before its release. The following marketing strategies are helpful:
- Content marketing and SEO - Adopting content marketing and SEO strategies is an excellent way of getting the software out to the target market. These marketing efforts should start with designing a website, which shouldn't be challenging. As for SEO, keyword optimization and other strategies that direct organic traffic to the website are effective.
- Social media and email marketing – Social media is supreme in the world today. The lead developer should create and optimize social media profiles on various social platforms. Sharing insightful information and engaging with social media followers is also important. As for email marketing, the same old strategies remain effective. However, the email list should include ready leads to boost conversion.
- Strategic partnerships and industry events – Lead developers should also focus on offline events and form partnerships with companies that complement the product. Industry events, such as World AIDs Day and other health-focused events, provide an excellent opportunity to market the finalized hospital management software.
Post Launch Software Maintenance and Growth
The software development journey doesn't end after the launch. The development team should conduct various post-launch activities, which include:
- Continuous improvement and feature updates – Involves providing continuous improvement and feature updates based on market trends and user expectations to keep the HMS relevant. The success of the software also comes with many challenges, such as increased traffic and more data, requiring more support.
- Analyzing user feedback and usage data – Analyzing user feedback and data is an important post-launch activity. The team should use this information to improve software performance and fine-tune other features to meet their expectations.
- Implementing new features and enhancements – Interestingly, almost 80% of new applications don't get positive feedback because of poor post-launch maintenance. To increase software usage, the team should regularly fix bugs and technical glitches, improve UX, ensure compatibility with the latest operating systems, and introduce new features that suit customer needs.
- Customer support and training – Healthcare workers without training won't benefit from hospital management software. The team should be prepared to offer extensive training sessions to help the target market get the most from the software. Similarly, developers should provide reliable customer support and be ready to answer user queries and other issues.
- Help center and knowledge base – These are an essential addition to the health management software and other applications. Even in the current digital era, not everybody can navigate simple platforms. Developers should include a help center and knowledge base that users can use for guidance when stuck.
- Webinars and training materials – Rolling out webinars and distributing training materials are other important post-launch events that can increase hospital management software adoption rates. Webinars are also a perfect place to market the software to potential customers.
Endnote
Building a successful hospital management software isn't as challenging as it seems. Developers should begin by assessing the specific pain points facing hospital personnel and design a platform that solves their challenges. For instance, hospitals always look for better ways of managing and tracking patient data. With this, developers can design an HMS that makes it easier for healthcare providers to access patient information across all departments.
Health management software should meet specific patients' needs and improve the productivity of medical personnel. These systems should reduce paperwork and bureaucracies and enhance the quality of patient care. It should also reduce human factors and other common bottlenecks that undermine seamless healthcare service provision.
