The medical sector has been modernized due to the emergence of numerous healthcare apps and solutions that enhance the overall quality of care for patients and make lives convenient for medical practitioners. With healthcare mobility coming into the mainstream, healthcare entities are finding out new ways to become more agile and creating niche solutions.
But the real challenge is that there are not enough experienced programmers that can develop HIPAA compliant apps to streamline medical workflow and complex processes for patients, doctors, and other stakeholders.
Medical organizations are trying to overcome development crises by utilizing low code app development platform. But what are these in the first place? Also, how you can pick the best one on the basis of features offered? Let’s explore in detail.
What Are Healthcare Low Code App Development Platforms?
According to a report produced by Forrester, low code app development platforms are also known as rapid mobile app development (RMAD) platforms. These platforms facilitate rapid development of medical apps with a minimum of manual coding required. Also, you don’t have to invest much in setup, training, and deployment of these apps.
Low code or zero code app development solutions allow non-techies to build their own clinical mobile apps with the help of a small team. This ensures they get the most value in hiring the top app development companies from the industry.
These platforms simplify the entire development process of healthcare apps. Also, the app owner can give a quick demo of the app in front of all stakeholders with the help of responsive prototyping and modify it quickly so that it can be deployed as soon as possible.
In addition, these apps are tailored to suit specific requirements of clinicians. There’s no need to build apps right from scratch as these platforms provide its users with all the essential tools and templates needed to build efficient medical solutions.
But you can’t blindly pick a low code app development solution to create your own medical app as stated in exclusive research done by IDC. Rather it’s advisable to look for certain mandatory features which are listed below:
1. First of all, when exploring different vendors for low code app development you need to evaluate the platforms that they use. Also, you should find out what kinds of apps have been successfully developed using that particular platform in the past and if those apps are similar to the one that you are trying to develop.
2. The second priority should be given to capabilities and design focus of that platform. You need to ensure that the interface isn’t much complex for the users such as the medical practitioners and other health stakeholders. When hiring nurse practitioners, you need to ensure they are enough technologically savvy to be able to run these apps on the job. Also, the platform must provide its users with integral features for seamless data management, as well as scalability and efficient process management.
3. It’s obvious that every individual low code app development platform has its own approach and it’s not essential that all approaches will yield the desired results for your business. But as you are operating in the healthcare sector, before making a final call, ensure that the platform has other features such as connectivity, networking, and security.
It’s important because all clinical solutions and apps must be built in compliance with HIPAA standards in order to ensure that the Protected Health Information (PTI) they deal with is stored, exchanged, and shared securely. According to Valaine Anderson, who is the VP of Marketing at Caspio a global software giant, “If a low code platform can fulfil all their project requirements while also taking care of compliance it can be a good fit”.
4. Along with key features, you need to cross check that the low code app development platform offers other services such as mobile support, app performance, portability, and most importantly interoperability with other solutions in the system. Make sure that the clinical app which you are going to produce can be integrated seamlessly with health IT systems and other major apps.
5. One of the most significant aspects to consider is the scalability of the low code app development platform to ensure that the healthcare app can be constantly updated and launched again easily to suit dynamic marketplace. This means that the zero code development platform should have an efficient app life-cycle management that relies on seamless testing, deployment, maintenance, and flexible interface.
Anderson also said that “Organizations need to consider how they will scale projects because data silos are only good for a certain period of time,”. “Eventually problems can come up where certain systems are not integrated with one another. For a complete view of the data, organizations have to think about all the different entities that may need to be integrated with the low-code platform.”
In addition to above-mentioned five points it’s mandatory for you to have a detailed understanding of specific requirements and problems which will be the building blocks for your clinical app. These insights will only allow you to successfully exploit a low code app development platform and create a enterprise-grade medical app to cater to specific needs of the target audience.
Author Bio: Anubhuti Shrivastava is a content crafter at Arkenea and Benchpoint. She is passionate about writing articles on topics related to design and the software development industry.
