Finding The Right Medical Software Development Company | Complete Guide

Healthcare has become digital, and we are using healthcare apps today to connect with a doctor or order a medicine/lab test in a matter of a few clicks or touches. The hassle of travelling, booking an offline appointment, and waiting for your turn to connect to a medical professional or doctor has significantly reduced by just opening an app, booking a slot, and connecting with a doctor to get a consultation in 15 minutes or less.

The demand for hiring a medical software development company to develop healthcare apps is growing. As per Mckinsey, technology innovations will play an important role in the value of the healthcare industry. It’s expected to reach ~$410 million by 2025.

If you are a business dealing with healthcare and looking to enter into the health-tech market or re-engineer your legacy healthcare IT systems like hospital software, there has never been a better time to hire a hospital management software development company.

Before you start searching for healthcare IT solutions provider, you must know the reasons to look for a healthcare IT solution company. Knowing the key decision metrics helps narrow down your search and choose an ideal medical software development company.

The first question – Do you need a medical software development company?

You can go ahead and hire an in-house IT team or hire a freelance developer(s) to achieve your objective. Here, the important question is, “Is going for an experienced medical software development company necessary?”

These are the 4 reasons that support the fact that you need a seasoned healthcare IT solution company. Let’s discuss them in detail here.

Why do you need a medical software development company to develop your next healthcare IT solution?

1. You have full control over the project

From a freelancer perspective, they lack the infrastructure, industry expertise, licences, and processes required for end-to-end software development. They may charge you less, but your project may not be in great hands. It may lead to poor UI/UX, governance, regulatory, and other issues like poor architecture that can lead to application instability and security breaches.

Also, the freelance developer may be good in one aspect, like UX/UI or web design or app development. Chances are, they may not be experts in all areas of hospital management software.

Post-launch, you need a dedicated team of support and database engineers to maintain your healthcare apps, deploy security, and performance patches as per requirement, and ensure 24×7 availability. Freelancers may not have a support policy or resources to manage this aspect.

In the case of a dedicated IT team, it’s a better idea as compared to hiring freelancers. However, the cost to hire and manage them will be higher compared to freelancers. Moreover, you need an IT plan to engage them long-term as you will be paying them a monthly recurring fee. Simply put, hiring IT architects can increase your cost.

Hiring a hospital management software development company that has the expertise to develop other healthcare solutions can help you manage costs and projects better. You can discuss your requirements with a seasoned company like Knovator Technologies, and they can offer you long-term and short-term development and support packages.

You have complete control over the project costs, and budgets, and do not have to guide the team at every step. An experienced company will know the right questions and will ask them at the right time ensuring to minimise your intervention so that you can concentrate on the business aspects. You just need to devote 15-30 minutes of your time to receive timely updates from the company’s appointed project manager and provide your suggestions or acceptance.

2. Manage risks better

Freelancers and in-house developers can take long leaves or not give you updates on time. They can start working on other projects or take emergency leaves during critical times. Hiring a medical software development company can ensure that you do not have to worry about the updates as the company will ensure that proper backup resources are available, and you do not have to worry about the progress of the project or receive timely updates.

A healthcare IT solution development company like Knovator Technologies will also follow all HIPAA and PHI protocols in developing your app. Freelancers or in-house teams may skip this which will lead to regulatory and audit breaches.

3. Experience is not an issue

You cannot hire a team that can help you build software for tomorrow. Let’s consider the fact that your project requires the integration of a medical or IoT device in a software solution. In the case of freelancers or in-house teams, you must first look for a resource and then pay a salary also post the work is completed.

However, Knovator Technologies hospital software development company has a dedicated team for healthcare projects, and you can always pick a resource as per your skills and expertise and only pay for the desired work outcome. You can even hire a Google map developer and build a map module to find medical professionals near your location.

4. Commitment, quality, and dedication

With an experienced hospital management software development company, the outcome (be it app, website or software) will be delivered with utmost quality. Freelancers juggling multiple projects tend to compromise quality and move to another project.

On the other hand, when you hire a medical software development company, all boxes related to software development phases like UI/UX, development, code review, code quality, healthcare compliance, application security, user acceptance testing, and regulatory testing are done before releasing the project to end-users.

Indeed, the above points support the need for hiring a medical software development company like Knovator Technologies. However, the question remains how would you choose the ideal healthcare IT solution company for your project.

Let’s discuss the 11 key decision metrics that can act as your selection criteria for choosing the right company for your project.

Key metrics that impact your decision to choose the best hospital management software company

1. Company’s expertise in healthcare

Your #1 criteria or key metric is the number of projects completed by a healthcare IT provider. Moreover, the projects must be diversified and not aligned to one healthcare sector.

An ideal company will have expertise in launching projects in areas like electronic medical records, patient engagement solutions, revenue cycle management systems, prior authorization systems, mobile apps, healthcare CRM solutions, remote patient monitoring systems, healthcare eCommerce apps, telemedicine solutions with extended expertise in IoT and Google map solutions.

The projects completed must be HIPAA, HIS, PHI, PII, and local government compliant along with security and load certification provided by other vendors.

2. A portfolio should speak for itself

Just experience and certifications are not important, and a company must have an actual portfolio of healthcare projects to support its claim of being an ideal healthcare IT solution provider. You can check out the samples and verify if they are doing well in the real market. You can check if they are serving clients in your business domain only.

Ideally, the medical software development company’s portfolio must include:

• Types of software developed in the healthcare sector
• Number of clients served with their credentials
• Complexity of projects
• Advanced features like IoT and EHR integration
• User experience expertise
• Technologies expertise
• Requirement analysis and written communication skills expertise

3. Reviews and Ratings should be real

Many review and rating sites like Clutch provide quality and real reviews to ensure that companies can read and hire vendors. You can also talk to the clients and seek their feedback to select a good provider.

4. Process and development methodology

Medical software development company Knovator Technologies will follow a stringent process to build and deliver quality software. The steps include:

• Requirement analysis and brainstorming
• Scope development and risk analysis with non-technical requirements
• Prototype or MVP development
• Development
• UI/UX fine-tuning
• Internal QA
• User Acceptance Testing
• Deployment
• Post-launch support and maintenance

You can talk to clients and the internal team to verify if a dedicated process is being followed.

5. The costs must fit your budget

You can quote your budget and then ask the software development company for recommendations. You can compare feature-wise costs and then exclude or include a feature to meet your requirements. You can also prioritize features based on your local requirements and ensure to spend the budget properly. A good software development company will provide more bang for your buck and ensure that budget is spent properly without compromising on the quality.

6. Support for industry-standard engagement models

You need to have a corporate relationship with your healthcare and hospital management software development company. This relationship can be in the form of an engagement model that is discussed and signed with standard documents like NDA, software agreement and MSA.

There are many engagement models that a reliable software company will support including:

• Fixed quote model – Also known as the turnkey engagement model, this model requires that you provide the complete fixed scope, and the company will also provide a fixed quote for the same project. It’s perfect for short-term projects, DevOps projects, and projects with a clear scope.
• Hourly model – Also known as Time and Material model, an hourly rate is defined, and the client will pay as per the hours spent by the resources working on the project. It’s suitable for MVP or agile product development. You have more flexibility and do not have to worry about the scope of the project. You can also opt for long-term projects with a dynamic hourly quote.
• Dedicated resource hiring model – Based on your requirements, you hire full-time resources for your project from the company. These developers can act as an extension for your in-house team as contributors or consultants and develop projects that do not have a clear scope, or an advanced module is required in an existing project.

7. Post-launch care and support

Reliable healthcare IT solution provider company will not leave your project post-deployment. They will provide support and maintenance till your application is stable in high traffic times.

You can ask for free and paid support and they must use a proper helpdesk process to ensure that your software runs 24×7 and is available for use at any time and at any location.

8. Team structure

The team structure of a medical software development company like Knovator Technology will compromise a standard team that includes:

• Requirement analyst and business analyst
• Project manager
• UI/UX designer
• Developer
• QA tester
• Software architect or engineer

9. Information security

Is your selected company aware of HIPAA, HIS, PHI, PII, and GDPR compliance rules? Have they built an application that has been tested against the above standard governance rules? The team selected must have done certifications and courses to ensure that your medical records are protected and not available for download or print till permission is granted from the admin panel.

10. Information IT infrastructure

Is your selected company able to deploy applications in the cloud or on-premise without compromising on attacks like DDoS and other cyber-attacks? Do you have a cyber analyst who ensures to analyze the incoming traffic and remediate any cyber attack to protect the integrity of your application? The team selected must know the answers to the above questions and ensure that your application is modern, secure, and must be encrypted with blockchain technology.

Knovator Technology – A reliable healthcare IT and medical software development company

You can achieve digital transformation of your healthcare business and deliver better health outcomes by hiring Knovator Technologies.

Our hospital management software has helped companies like yours leverage technology to boost online presence and get more ROI out of their technology investments.

As a leading medical software development company, we serve clients across the globe, using multiple technology infrastructures.

With Knovator Technology’s automation, AI, and IoT integrated healthcare application suite, you can rest assured that your project is delivered on time. You can check our ratings on Clutch and hire us for any healthcare IT project without any hesitation. Let’s connect today and make a difference in the healthcare segment!