Digital healthcare software has now become an integral part of modern
healthcare practices. It has changed how healthcare providers deliver
care services and interact with patients as well. Healthcare software
helps healthcare providers to deliver better healthcare services with
improved efficiencies. It improves patient experiences and outcomes,
helps enhance operational efficiency, and ensures that accurate data
is stored and used when needed. In the digitalization of the
healthcare industry, there is now a greater demand for advanced and
reliable software solutions, so healthcare organizations must ensure
they invest in the correct technology.
Picking the wrong tech stack can result in a costly rewrite,
compliance nightmares, or security vulnerabilities that ultimately
risk patient health and trust. As one of the founding members of
Surgery by Wire, making the right tech choices – otherwise known as
the ‘technology stack’ – is probably the most impactful decision we
could make at the outset of developing healthcare software. The tech
stack is the combination of programming languages, frameworks,
databases, and tools, and the software sits both at the top and at the
bottom of the technical architecture pyramid. The tech stack makes the
tech stack. If the tech architecture of your application is carefully
thought out, it should become the key differentiator in your product
roadmap, optimizing your product's performance, scalability, and
security. The digital health world drives adherence to the most
stringent regulations for network security, data integrity, and
privacy.
Choosing the right technology stack is the initial step in
custom software development for healthcare, which not only establishes a platform for the entire system to be
built on top of but also serves as a foundation for delivering the
expectations set by the unique nature of patient care, legal
compliance, and safety of all medical information by healthcare
entities. The right code works in creating the mobile and desktop user
interface (UI) and handling the backend demands, such as storing
electronic health records, allowing telemedicine, connecting to
patient portals, and ensuring the smooth operation of medical
personnel. A well-executed software architecture also helps maintain
security and privacy for patient medical information, regulates who
can access categorized records, and sets granular permissions for each
user to access sensitive information.
It isn’t easy to overstate the importance of the technology stack when
making healthcare software that works. A capable stack allows the
software to run as efficiently as possible, making it more
straightforward for a computer to process huge amounts of data in
seconds, handle sophisticated algorithms, and fulfill tasks with high
volume and complexity. This is very important in healthcare because
delays or downtime in healthcare software can potentially have dire
consequences for patients and medical practitioners. Second, it needs
to scale. As businesses grow and the amount of data processed by the
software increases, the software needs to scale up as well, but
without severely affecting the performance of the healthcare
application that both practitioners and patients are accustomed to. A
robust technology stack helps ensure the software can sustain
expansion and stay current with the growing needs and practices of the
health industry.
One of the main selection criteria of the technology stack is
future-proofing. With rapid technological innovation and changes in
government regulations in the industry, new technologies and
regulations are emerging more and more frequently. If the technology
stack is highly flexible, that software can be easily updated with new
functionalities, and
custom healthcare software development services
can easily respond to the changed regulations without re-engineering
the system at each position. This flexibility will bring considerable
savings in the long run, keep our software up-to-date, and deliver
quality service. We must choose a future-proof technology stack that
can help our software keep pace with the changes and challenges. This
could make us more visionary and prepared.
The healthcare software technology stack is the set of programming languages, frameworks, libraries, and APIs developers use to build applications. This selection will be one of the most impactful decisions you make about the system you are building. A healthcare software stack translates into the security of the system, ease of maintenance, performance and scalability possibilities, interoperability with other healthcare software to share patient data, ease of use for the end-user, ability to add new features on an ongoing basis, and the associated cost and timeline to build the system. The healthcare technology stack will make or break the software built because of the nuances and complexity associated with healthcare work.
Compliance with security rules has become the main focus for healthcare software developers. With healthcare information's invaluable and personal nature, developers must comply with various regulations, such as HIPAA in the US and GDPR in the European Union. HIPAA includes lawful protocols for the protection of ePHI (electronic personal health information), which must be used by all covered entities (any organization, company, or person who transmits health information in electronic form in the US) to meet the requirements of the act. GDPR, on the other hand, helps protect EU residents' personal information. Both regulations include numerous rules, such as requirements for any or all encryption, secure authentication methods, or regular security audits of the system, which can help the software adhere to relevant standards, safeguard patient data, and prevent unauthorized access to the system and its data.
In healthcare software product development, scalability and performance are both essential because as the needs of healthcare organizations increase with more data coming in, the volumes of data will also grow. Therefore, the scale of the technology stack should also increase and be able to make changes when required to enhance the system's performance. In this case, one can use scalable technologies and optimize performance by using techniques like load balancing, organizing the databases, and coding techniques so that the software product can handle the amount of traffic and increase the data requirements as the needs grow with the processing of data.
Interoperability keeps care coordination on track when one system requires data from another system. Without interoperability, valuable test results from an inpatient ward, for instance, could be stuck inside that system and unavailable to the outpatient clinic. Today, most healthcare systems include at least one electronic health record (EHR) for medical records, a laboratory information system for test results, and a billing system. Health Level 7 (HL7) and FHIR specify how different devices within the hospital should communicate with each other. Even before a blockchain application is built, the technology stack developers can be selected to support those and other standards. That way, we can know that the software can communicate with other systems and avoid introducing barriers to care coordination and data access.
In particular, user experience (UX) – the design and ease of interfaces for the end-user – is critical to healthcare software success. For healthcare professionals and administrators, this is about easy navigation and easy access to information to smooth workflows, reducing the potential for errors. UX promotes engagement and satisfaction for patients through user-friendly portals and clear interfaces. Ensuring that UX is considered in the selection process for technology stack components will help ensure that any software created is practical and user-friendly.
Choosing the right technology stack is crucial for ensuring robust performance, security, and scalability when developing custom healthcare software solutions. Several popular technology stacks are commonly used in the industry, each with its strengths and weaknesses.
It solves the full-stack JavaScript problem with the combination of a database (MongoDB), the web application framework (Express.js), the front-end framework (Angular), and the server environment (Node.js) named MEAN. Given that the stack relies on JavaScript consistently, it allows the developers to use the code repeatedly among the stack with little or no modifications, speeding up development time and maintenance. While specific data relationships could be improved, the MEAN stack suffers from the direct implication of MongoDB itself, the NoSQL database system. This data modeling entails poor implicit support for healthcare applications.
The main difference between the MERN stack and the MEAN stack lies in exchanging Angular with React, a library for building consumer-facing user interfaces (UIs). Drawing from an approach that divides front-end apps into discrete components, React is sometimes thought to lend itself to more agile and flexible UI design, enabling the reusability of components. Therefore, working with the MERN stack can offer greater flexibility for building dynamic and interactive UIs, which is essential for any modern user-facing application. This makes MERN ideal for developing patient portals or other healthcare management systems. However, similar to MEAN, the burdensome use of MongoDB is unlikely to accommodate more complex applications, such as those requiring handling transactions.
For example, a classic web development stack comprises Linux as the operation system, Apache as the web server, MySQL as the database (thus forming the LAMP stack), and PHP, Perl, or Python as the scripting language. LAMP offers stability, security, and community support. The mature LAMP stack is reliable for healthcare applications with a strong emphasis on robust data management and security as a key requirement. However, the LAMP stack might not be the most scalable or suitable for developing real-time applications.
The Django stack (Django web framework, Python programming language, PostgreSQL database, and Nginx web server) is a widely used programming platform for custom software development for healthcare. Django’s in-built security features, such as defense against SQL injection and cross-site scripting, and its ability to protect against vulnerabilities make it a good candidate for handling sensitive healthcare data. PostgreSQL is a versatile database that can accommodate complex data queries and transactions needed for many healthcare applications. The challenge is that Django and Python can have a steep learning curve, especially for developers who are new to these technologies.
Naturally, as the healthcare industry continues to grow and evolve, it has implications for the landscape of healthcare custom software development, too; new technologies and trends have reshaped how traditional healthcare solutions are approached and developed. Whether it is the popularity of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, the rise of cloud technologies and microservices, or a mobile-first approach, there are a lot of key trends in healthcare software development to explore. These key trends in healthcare app development have shown us that not only are apps becoming smarter, faster, and more functional, but they will also continue to improve the way patients experience healthcare services.
Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are transforming modern healthcare practices. They are reshaping healthcare mobile app development services by introducing better and smarter ways to leverage the power of data. AI and ML models help with advanced medical data analyses, predictive analytics, and statistics. They are much more effective than human doctors at pattern recognition and data predictions. These AI algorithms help in drug discovery research, diagnostics, treatment planning, and disease management, such as remote patient monitoring. ML-based healthcare software models are highly accurate and efficient in processing massive volumes of complex medical data compared to manual patient care. In the field of medicine, ML models are being widely used in image recognition and natural language processing to improve the accuracy of diagnoses.
There has been an increased use of cloud technologies and microservices in custom healthcare software development. Cloud technologies in healthcare increase the scalability of systems, providing flexibility and cost optimization of the layout. In this way, cloud-based solutions enable physicians and other employees to find and use their data from anywhere. This is a significant asset for telemedicine, remote patient monitoring, and remote collaboration between healthcare facilities. Also, a microservices architecture approach is frequently used in healthcare software development projects – it refers to the scenario when a complex application is split into discrete and interactive parts called microservices. This approach increases a software system's scalability and resilience properties regarding availability, responsiveness, fault tolerance, and operational capability. It also helps to promote more agility in development as architecture, team organization, and deployment are more loosely coupled. As a result, healthcare applications become more modular, which is important when aiming to integrate new useful features and services in this particular domain.
The mobile-first approach is gaining traction in healthcare mobile app development, driven by the increasing use of smartphones. As smartphones become ubiquitous, more healthcare mobile applications are created using a mobile-first strategy. They are written so that the application works well on mobile devices first and foremost, rather than adapting it to the desktop later. Smartphones have become our primary means of communicating, engaging, and socializing. We prefer using our smartphones to complete an activity to the web or other smart devices. Nowadays, physicians and patients want immediate access to medical information and services when they are on the go. Mobile-first healthcare mobile applications can deliver compelling user experiences while on the move. These applications enable people to interact with healthcare professionals via video calls over mobile devices, provide secure access to patient information via smartphone patient portals, or offer health-tracking applications.
Choosing the right technology stack is critical as the entire healthcare software product development hinges on it. The selection of the right technology stack ensures proper security and compliance with the current regulations (HIPAA and GDPR compliance) and flexibility for the future. Healthcare applications must be secure and private, scalable, performant, and, most importantly, interoperable to be adopted in a complex environment. The right technology stack becomes one of the critical factors determining the success and sustainability of all healthcare software through its selection in terms of security, scalability, interoperability, UX, and cost. The right technology stack is the foundation for quality and innovation in healthcare, leading to improved precision and outcomes for the end-users and citizens.
