Telehealth & Quality Assurance: The Basics & The Best Practices

The Healthcare industry is quickly moving towards the digital concept. However, the recent pandemic has turned to be the reason for a significant push to the introduction of advanced software, applications, and digital services into the healthcare industry.   

The reflection of the same could be traced from the fact that the use of telehealth services has increased by 38X from the pre-covid baseline, as shared under a report by McKinsey. Fortunately, the strong uptake and highly favorable perception of the end-users have all made the tangible investment to flow into the telehealth space and help pace up the continued growth of telehealth.  

It includes the use of digital solutions like remote health monitoring, online appointments and meetings with doctors, record-keeping, and several other process management goals. And this boom in the telehealth industry is likely to grow considering the current development in the digital transformation scenario, making thorough software testing and QA services essential throughout.  

In this blog, we will try to highlight the various aspects of Quality Assurance while describing in detail the entire process of telehealth testing, underlining the focus areas and best practices.  

The Importance Of QA In Telehealth   

Since the entire concept of telehealth revolves around health and wellbeing, it is necessary that the process of digital health must be handled with responsibility. The approach should involve evaluating the business goals as well as the impact of the digital concept on the end-users when software is all set to launch.   

Here quality assurance services come in handy as it helps the developers and healthcare providers in:  

• Creating a bug-free experience for every major and minor bug that may affect the product at the early stages  

• Analyzing the end-user perspective and estimating product under test to meet the goals  

• Preparing the software for future scalability requirements.   

With that being said, let us quickly jump on the few most important thing that must be kept in mind when you need to attain the best outcomes from your telehealth software.   

Essentials to Focus When Testing Telehealth  

Even if every healthcare facility has its own process, telehealth solutions are much alike when it comes to features. Therefore, it is vital that the QA engineers before beginning with the QA and software testing services should aim for some essential questions.   

Is the application is working as expected?  

The primary objective of creating a telehealth application is to meet the functionality goals. Thus, the testers should begin their hunt for systems issues and defects by checking on the implemented features available on the application.   

The process usually begins by checking the ease of registration and accessing the system. Furthermore, the testers should mimic the behavior of real users to check convenience on appointment scheduling, user data synchronization, and any other business-critical features that can hamper the release response.   

If the system offers a pleasing online experience?  

As long as it is concerned with the audio/video features on the software, they fall under the functional testing aspect of the QA process. However, it is equally necessary that testers must work on the overall user experience offered by an application.   

This means creating an online portal that should offer the same experience on the healthcare application that a user experiences in real-time. From casual communication to diagnosis, the user should not experience any freezing screens or audio issues as such issues could cause some serious interruption during the diagnosis.   

Besides, when a digital health solution has a video option, software testers should check the behavior of the feature under varying network conditions. All in all, the application should offer pleasing communication features with ease of accessibility on the microphone and camera usage.   

If your software works well on different devices?  

The next important factor that testers need to keep in consideration when testing telehealth software is the ease of usage on specific devices or systems. Besides, the device in use should not possess any effect on the user experience and must offer smooth navigation and functionality on varying operating systems, their versions, browsers, etc. Such smooth usage could be ensured by wise integration of compatibility testing into the QA process.   

If the software offers a digitally inclusive experience?  

Accessibility is a very important factor when it comes to telehealth services. It refers to creating technology that is easy to access for varying user groups, especially patients with disabilities. Therefore, it becomes necessary for Quality Assurance Service providers to look for any adjustments that are must to offer a similar level of usability to all user groups.   

Also, you should necessarily focus on accessibility testing as it can help you to meet your compliance goals aligning with all the web content accessibility guidelines. These usually include:  

• Making a suitable choice on content, contrast, and page colors.  

• Ease of accessing different features through specialized controls.   

• Any onboarding directions must be easy to follow   

If the software is easy to use?  

Lastly, testers need to work on everything concerned with user experience and user interface. However, the analysis needs efforts from the marketing professionals on planning the controls while working on any layout consistencies that might affect the end output. It could even include any broken links, unreadable texts, fields that are overlapping, etc.   

Planning To Foster IoT In Your Healthcare Business? 

Read the blog to explore all the details of IoT Testing in Healthcare.  

IoT Testing in Healthcare – Definitions, Roles, Importance, Examples & Reasons To Perform IoT Testing 

QA Best Practices For Telehealth Solutions   

QA is much more than just testing. It needs testers to work on audits, business analysis, configuration management, release management, requirement engineering, etc. Thus, any search made for QA services must aim at finding a company that can handle all these tasks offering a little more than testing.   

As long as it is concerned with QA best practices that can help strengthen your telehealth software, here are a few important factors that can help you level up.  

• Documentation Testing 

Every QA process is incomplete until the testers and QA engineers have access to test requirements, test plans, checklists, test suites, overall strategy, and any other detail that can affect the ultimate outcomes. The QA teams should consider collecting all the test artifacts from stakeholders to ensure the testing could progress in the right direction.   

Besides, the test process documents should also define the path to track the progress of the test procedures including timely highlights on the changes made to the necessary paperwork. It would not only help testers and QA teams to coordinate better but ultimately brings more efficiency to the system.   

• Customized Testing 

As we have said earlier, every healthcare software is likely to share its functionality with other software in use. But it is necessary to understand the varying requirements, objectives, and purpose of the telehealth software to customize a personalized testing strategy. For instance, regression testing and smoke testing are common to use practices with most software. On the other hand, the use of compatibility testing and performance testing through automation testing solutions is more specific and is usually required to work at specific areas of development. A customized testing strategy ensures that all the right and necessary activities are added to the QA process in order to avoid unnecessary use of the resource.  

• Smooth User Experience 

If it is something that shapes the loyalty of your customers, it is the convenience offered on the application. Most telehealth software is made to facilitate the healthcare operations for doctors as well as patients. Therefore, your healthcare application must be made to improve the overall functionality and reliability of a healthcare organization that needs performance technology to expand its services. Such an approach could even help to take over any critical bugs and can generate recommendations that can drive a smooth user experience.   

• Security Audit 

As any telehealth software needs to handle a large volume of data, security is an important component that needs to be worked on. Partnering with a QA company that can provide security testing services could help testers to identify any potential issues with the software that might lead to cybersecurity attacks. Besides, the QA team working on telehealth software should keep their focus on any potential defects that might cause system vulnerability, app running complications, or any flaws that make entry points for cyber-attacks.  

• Business Analysis  

If you are working for a healthcare organization that needs to create an easily scalable telehealth software, consider reaching out to your business analyst. Business analysts could bring you all the data you need in context to market feedback, user response, and technical limitations. Such information could then be used further to lead your telehealth scalability needs in the right direction.   

The Crux  

Testing telehealth software is not an easy task. Since it is related to patient care and general operations in a healthcare facility, any development must only be done in collaboration with a reliable software testing company. It would not only help estimate the software from the end user’s perspective but can even complement the development lifecycle with QA support.   

Good luck!  

Looking for an experienced and professional quality assurance company to help you with your telehealth software? Our experts at BugRaptors could help you yield all the desired performance, security, and productivity.   

Reach us through info@bugraptors.com