Revolutionizing Healthcare Demands a New Approach to Software Development

You don’t need to look far to find patient dissatisfaction with the healthcare industry today. In fact, according to a survey by KFF, an independent source of health policy research, nearly six in ten Americans have experienced a problem in using their healthcare insurance in the last twelve months—such as denied claims, provider network problems, and pre-authorization issues.

Would IT infrastructure modernization help healthcare organizations improve their overall service to their patients, partners, and other third-parties? The short answer is yes. In November 2023, I explored the transformative potential of DevOps, microservices, and data visualization in the healthcare sector in an article for the International Journal of Management, IT & Engineering. These three technology pillars emphasize automation, continuous integration, continuous delivery, and a holistic approach to the software development lifecycle. In this piece, we’ll take a closer look at how these technologies can benefit the healthcare industry.

Better together: DevOps, microservices, and data visualization

The healthcare industry faces unique and often complex challenges, including government regulations such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) in the United States. Historically, healthcare insurance organizations have processed millions of claims manually, which takes a lot of effort, time, and cost and introduces the possibility of human error.

By adopting DevOps, microservices, and data visualization all together, organizations can automate these and other tasks, so they are completed in a fraction of the time they now take. As a result, healthcare workers are relieved of mundane chores so they can focus on higher-level tasks. Efficiency rises while costs drop. Most importantly, patient care is enhanced. Before we outline the specific benefits in greater detail, let’s first review the three technology pillars:

• DevOps: This software development methodology emphasizes collaboration, communication, and automation between software development (Dev) and IT operations (Ops) teams.
• Microservices: Microservices represent an architectural approach to software development, in which an application is made up of small, independently deployable services that work together to provide the application's functionality. Examples of services would be authenticating the identity of a user, handling payment processing, or tracking inventory.
• Data visualization: This is the graphical representation of information using charts and other visual elements that make the data easier to understand, interpret, and gather insights from.

Building a more modern IT Infrastructure to better serve patients

In combination, DevOps, microservices, and data visualization provide numerous benefits for healthcare organizations. Here are a few key benefits:

• Faster application development. DevOps reshapes an organization’s culture, helping all stakeholders to work in tandem. This results in reduced errors and more reliable healthcare applications. Adopting DevOps, microservices, and data visualization allows applications to be developed and deployed much faster than using traditional methods.
• Improved collaboration. DevOps reduces the gaps between developers and operations teams, enabling people to work together toward the same goals.
• Enhanced flexibility and scalability. Microservice architecture can decompose monolithic healthcare applications into smaller independent services. This modularity allows healthcare organizations to develop, update, and maintain services individually, resulting in a more flexible and manageable system. As a result, healthcare organizations can more effectively accommodate fluctuating patient volumes.
• Clear and actionable insights. Data visualization tools take complex data about medication adherence or resource allocation, and turn it into graphs that are easier to absorb and analyze. Healthcare professionals can analyze patient data, such as vital signs, lab results, and medical histories, in real time, which enables them to make more informed decisions and ultimately improve the outcomes of patient care.

Success: a cultural journey

Leaders in healthcare organizations understand the importance of bolstering their technology. In a 2023 survey by Bain & Company, 56% of U.S. healthcare officials cited software and technology as one of their top three priorities, up from 34% in 2022. For healthcare organizations to address the many challenges they face, they must embrace DevOps, microservices, and data visualization, . By leveraging these combined technologies, organizations can successfully meet their business objectives and significantly improve patient service.  

Implementation is key to success. DevOps is a cultural journey that requires stakeholders to understand the current gaps between their developers and operations teams. In addition, DevOps introduces a significant amount of new technology that requires careful planning and implementation to ensure patient data privacy is not compromised.

Companies must also guard against introducing inefficiencies through the overuse of microservices—an issue known as “microservice sprawl.” Choosing the right data visualization tools among the many on the marketplace is another huge task. Teams must consider whether the tools are user-friendly, scalable, and can handle real-time data feeds.

In addition, leaders must address workers’ concerns that automation will take away their jobs. Automation enhances employees’ jobs by removing the most mundane aspects of their work. In any significant IT project, effective change management is essential.

All around the world, we are hearing a clarion call to improve healthcare delivery. Implementing DevOps, microservices, and data visualization in a comprehensive manner can revolutionize healthcare IT infrastructure. This will ultimately improve patient care and provide the enhanced agility, scalability, and responsiveness that the ever-evolving healthcare industry requires.

Conclusion

Broadcom provides several tools that can aid healthcare organizations in their DevOps, microservices, and data visualization journey:

• Test Data Manager removes many of the testing bottlenecks that can slow down the delivery of applications.
• Agile Requirements Designer makes requirements clear and unambiguous.
• Continuous Delivery Director helps companies release high-quality software at greater velocity.
• Nolio Release Automation regulates and speeds app delivery across the enterprise—enabling zero-touch deployments from development to production.