Category: Custom software

Digital transformation is pervasive. It is hard but absolutely crucial. Enterprises need to transform their traditional business or risk sure failure. As new players emerge and disrupt established businesses, you will need a fundamental transformation of your core processes to remain competitive.

This may come with its share of worries though. Some of these dilemmas are obvious and quite common. They can be categorized into five major sections: productivity dilemma, value dilemma, ethical dilemma, leadership dilemma, and the human dilemma.

The right approach to these dilemmas is not taking absolute positioning with one of the concepts. Instead, a combination of the two concepts will bring the most value to your business and your clients.

This compromise or combination is not a one size fits all solution. Each organization must figure out where the right compromise is for its business. Wherever you position yourself between the concepts, know that it will have a significant impact on your business.

Given the high stakes involved, digital transformation can be an anxiety-inducing term. Digital transformation can be especially challenging for enterprises with hundreds of employees, assets worth billions, and established business models. In our experience at Fingent, answering these questions greatly increases your organizations’ chances of getting your digital transformation right.

1. What does Digital Transformation really mean?

Digital transformation involves two parts:

• Transforming to digital: This is about using digital technology as a destination. Simply put, it is reorienting your organization to the strategic use of digital technologies. These technologies may include social networks, cloud platforms, products, and so on.
• Transforming digitally: This is about changing how you take the actual digital journey. In other words, this is about using digital technologies to change the nature of your business transformation.

We have found that the organizations that have implemented both aspects are reaping huge rewards than those that are using just one.

Read more: All You Need to Know About Digitization, Digitalization, and Digital Transformation

2. Where should I begin with Digital Transformation?

Because digital transformation affects so many aspects of organizational operations and customer behavior, it can be difficult to know where to begin. Hence, business leaders need to review the core elements of the business affected by the change.

Here is what you can do: Systematically work through the elements and rank each one by its possible impact and feasibility. Doing so will provide a clearer vision of how your business landscape is changing. It also helps you think through the implications of your business.

3. How to identify which customer journey matters the most?

Every business is aware of its own priorities. For most businesses, their first priority is to use digital technologies to connect internal resources to create a more compelling customer experience.

Focusing on individual interactions with your brand helps ground the transformation by optimizing the customer journey. This helps your organization to identify which technology, process, and capability are needed to deliver a great experience.

Here is what you can do: Map out the customer journey from start to finish. Then, focus on how you can make each touchpoint better, faster, and more efficient. This may require adjusting key performance indicators to track and reward progress on customer journeys.

4. What is the biggest impediment to Digital Transformation?

Lack of collective thinking can be a huge barrier that can block your journey to digital transformation. This happens when there is no up-to-date strategic view of who is responsible for progress and how technology should add value to your business.

Here is what you can do: Provide visible CEO support to build momentum. This would require a clear mandate on things to do, sufficient resources to develop a program, and profit-loss accountability.

5. Is it necessary to ‘Test and Learn’?

Successful organizations iterate until they get it right! Constant testing will help them deliver what customers want and understand why they want it. This approach will prevent organizations from getting caught up in overly deterministic specifications, needless market research, and ineffective long planning cycles.

Here is what you can do to ensure that your ‘test and learn’ is effective: Constantly review the actions of your teams. Also, review the investments against data on all areas of customers’ journey. This will help in increasing incremental sales.

Read more: A Detailed Guide to Understanding Digital Business Transformation

6. How do I know what is the right Budgetary Cycle?

An insufficient budgetary cycle can hamper digital transformation efforts. A flexible budgetary cycle will always be the most effective one, so your investment should be linked to progress.

Here is what you can do: You need not hesitate to pull the plug if key performance indicators fail. On the other hand, you must also be ready to quickly pump in more funding if the performance justifies it.

7. What are the benefits of a Challenger Board?

Remember not all ideas are brilliant. A ‘challenger board’ can ensure that a bad idea does not squander all your resources.

Here is what you can do: Choose people who know your business inside out to form your ‘challenger board.’ Based on their experience and outsider perspective, these experts can quickly uncover problems and identify opportunities for business disruption.

As a second option, you could set up a dedicated advisory board. They can help a company guide its organization through digital transformation.

Read more: Future Proof Your Business With 5G, Edge Computing, And Cloud!

How Can Fingent Help In Your Approach To Digital Transformation?

If your primary concern is speed to market and ongoing work agility, rest assured, Fingent is here to help you. We are experts in AEC, an acronym that stands for Agility, Engagement, and Connectivity.

• Agility: Fingent will enable you to build and implement applications quickly.
• Engagement: Our experts at Fingent can prove appropriate application user experiences for each worker.
• Connectivity: We will make it easy for you to integrate your business with external systems and data sources.

Together with new cloud-based deployment, we at Fingent extend strong support for model-driven organizations. We will help you break through the inevitable barriers and increase your chances of achieving a successful digital transformation. Call us!

2020 has proved beyond doubt that technology partnership is an essential element in the creation of a successful business. Sticking to a DIY strategy may sound good in the wake of economic upheaval. But honestly, no business wants to “just survive.” Every business in every sector wants to thrive and stay relevant despite the challenges.

In recent times, technology keeps changing far too quickly. Missing the first door of opportunity may mean greatly diminished market potential. On the contrary, partnering with a technology company offers the quickest way to ensure an impactful presence in your market segment.

Do you own a business? Or are you an entrepreneur with multiple companies? Is the concept of a “technology partner” too abstract for you? If so, we are here to help you understand why partnering with a reliable tech company is the need of the hour. Here’s also highlighting the benefits of such a partnership.

Read more: Technology Investments: How to gain maximum value?

Why is Partnering with Tech Companies the Need of the Hour?

Most businesses around the world are recovering from pandemic-related economic hardship. Although this has scared many, it is clear that businesses need to become more ‘upheaval-ready.’ Partnering with a tech company can make your business ‘upheaval-ready’ while elevating your business. Let’s now consider specific reasons.

1. Apprehensive about future challenges?

During the pandemic, you may have had to adapt to new ways of doing business. There is a high probability that this change may not end here. The next few years may experience aftershocks due to health and safety standards and economic fallouts.

Thankfully, new technologies and new ways of using old technologies can help you meet your current and future business needs. What do you implement though and how in the world will you go about doing that? This is where partnering with a tech company can be a boon.

2. You need specific talent

Consider this scenario: you have new projects that require a specific skill set that your current team does not possess. On the other hand, it is also not the right time to hire. Plus, you do not have the time or resources to look for such talent.

Additionally, bringing in new talent that would require extensive training can be way more exhausting than it may seem. What is your best option? A tech partner! Your partner will be able to provide the needed skillset. This may prove to be more cost-effective and less exhausting than hiring and training a new candidate.

3. New technology seems painfully elusive

Do you feel that your competitors are pushing ahead with the latest technology while you can’t even begin to wrap your head around it? Are you anxious that your business will suffer if you do not adopt digital transformation immediately?

If so, worry no more! A partnership with a technology company is exactly what you need to give your business that edge that seems so elusive.

Read more: Why Software Development Outsourcing is a Smart Move Now?

Benefits Of Partnering with Technology Company

Collaboration is key to creativity – Walter Isaacson

Collaboration that brings in creativity and spearheads agility is what you need right now. Here are some direct and indirect benefits of tech partnership:

1. Provides a new set of eyes backed with experience

Does your business require multiple levels of testing and repeated proofreading and fact-checking stages? Do you occasionally require external evaluation to identify issues you cannot see immediately? Your tech partner can do all of these for you. Also, they may be able to provide unique solutions for your specific needs.

Allowing a tech partner to take care of these needs can free your time and resources to stay focused on what you do best.

2. Offers skillset and solutions as and when you need

Business suffers when problems go unidentified and unsolved. Partnering with the right tech company can help you identify and solve such issues before they snowball.

The best part of this partnership is that you can hire them on your terms. It can either be short-term or something that you do yearly.

3. Cost and labor savings

Cost and labor are major points of consideration in running a profitable business. Not all businesses can afford the latest tech advancements. There is no arguing however that organizations need the latest technology to run their business efficiently and cost-effectively.

A tech partner can help in managing communication and resource organization by eliminating manual processes. It can reset repetitive and simple data entry tasks that can consume precious time. Time saved is money saved!

4. Reduce risks

No business can afford a technology failure as it can pose a huge risk. A tech partner can insulate your organization from those risks.

5. Increased employee performance

Technology helps employees do their jobs more efficiently. You cannot afford to miss important compatibility and workflow improvement opportunities in this age. Your tech partner can help integrate your network to improve employee performance. This automatically leads to improved business performance.

6. Opportunity to expand your tech expertise

Not all businesses can afford technical expert knowledge in-house. Partnering with a tech company allows you to complement and broaden your organization’s existing technical expertise.

7. The partnership is more cost-effective

Paying employees 24/7, 365 days for IT support is expensive. It is cost-effective to outsource the IT support team. Partnering with a tech company can give you greater access to experienced tech support when you need it.

Read more: Understanding Managed Services for IT: Why it Matters?

Why Fingent Can Be Your Ideal Tech Partner

Fingent brings a wealth of technical expertise coupled with business experience to our partners. We draw on decades of engineering expertise to develop unique solutions for each of our clients.

At Fingent we maximize the potential of your business with tech expertise backed by sound business sense. We can empower you with the benefits that technology can offer to compete in a global arena.

Fingent has both the necessary certifications and experience you need. Our staff is diversified with specific tasks but is kept informed about each level of the project. We stay abreast of all technological advances.

We have worked with a wide range of clients and have the skills needed to partner with new industries. We believe that technology can enhance and enrich all walks of human existence.

Visionaries at Fingent can help you reimagine the way you work. Fingent can help kickstart your digital transformation journey to bring you into the future – a thriving and stable future. We are confident that you will appreciate all the strategies we create to help you. Give us a call and find out for yourself.

With the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the healthcare industry is spiraling at an unexpected speed and is continuously inventing healthcare solutions to drive streamlined operations. Medical organizations are now largely depending on custom healthcare software solutions to maintain medical history, electronic health records, patient’s personal information, and other medical data to provide better patient care and health services. This blog will take you through why your healthcare organization needs to invest in custom healthcare software development, and how it’s beneficial to outsource it!

What is custom healthcare software development?

Today, healthcare is driven by technological innovations such as big data, electronic patient record systems, interoperability, and machine learning. The need for this is to provide better patient experiences and improve health outcomes. To achieve this, there is a need for professionally designed tools and solutions that can help healthcare providers to deliver patient-first and cost-effective care.

Custom healthcare software development is the process of creating web or mobile apps for medical professionals so they can interact with patients better, use medical data analytics, and access patient health records.

Examples of how custom software development has transformed the healthcare industry include;

• Tools such as Hospital Management Systems (HMS) or Hospital Information System (HIS) are comprehensive integrated solutions that handle different aspects of hospital or clinic’s workflow efficiently.
• An Electronic Health Record (EHR) system collects a patient’s data and history and stores it in a digital format that makes sharing across different healthcare systems easy.
• Mobile apps and wearable devices are serving several health aspects.

Read more: Augmented Reality in Healthcare: The Industry Future!

Key benefits of custom healthcare software

1. Tailor-made solution

Software solutions built specifically catering to your organizational needs help deliver better customer services. Especially when it concerns providing patient-care services, it is always recommended to invest in custom or tailormade solutions. An off-the-shelf or packaged solution, in comparison to a custom software solution, may or may not be able to meet your organization’s requirements or even work well within a specific type of facility. A custom software solution will help solve your business-specific complexes and will help meet your business goals.

2. Streamline processes

Undoubtedly, technology enables us to get our work done efficiently and more accurately. A custom software solution can have a far-reaching impact. It frees your staff to allow them to focus on patient care.

3. Personalized care

Today, patients want to understand their health on their own and expect personalized services from their healthcare provider. This is why there is an increasing demand for telemedicine, at-home testing kits, and health apps.

4. Enhanced security

Custom healthcare software solutions are built in compliance with the industry standards and guarantee that personal data stays secure and confidential. An app must comply with Open Web Application Security Project standards and other certifications, to be approved.

When it comes to creating custom healthcare software, organizations can;

• Leverage any open-source platform to create a customizable solution without the need for coding
• Outsource the entire custom software development process to a reliable development agency.

Read more: Why Healthcare Prefers Prescriptive Analytics Over Predictive Analytics

Advantages of outsourcing healthcare software development

1. Economical and effective

By outsourcing to a third-party offshore company, you can save a lot of costs. It helps save largely on the cost of developing application infrastructure, recruiting professionals, training the recruits, and deployment and pre-installation set-up costs. Most service providers use advanced technology that would fit your budget.

2. Experienced team

While some projects require a large pool of software developers others may not. In such cases, it may be difficult to hire software developers and then relieve them after completing the work as it involves a huge cost to hire, set up infrastructure, and team. Therefore, outsourcing custom healthcare software development gives you the leeway to scale up or down resources as per your project requirements.

3. Agile and scalable solutions

In-house healthcare developers are usually burdened with several other tasks which cause them to lose focus and compromise on the delivery of the app. Collaborating with a third-party agency will provide you with the flexibility of managing the resources and whenever you need them. This will also help you include scalable software developers to build an app that is more agile and consistent.

4. Quick time to market

Outsourcing the custom development task will give you access to experts from healthcare domains to develop your applications. This will ensure your app be superior,well-grained, and reach the market faster so patients can be treated faster.

5. Increased productivity

As offshore developers are qualified and talented enough to develop your app, you won’t have to burden them with briefings and preparations. This will allow you to focus on improving the critical and core healthcare services of your organization thus improving the results significantly.

Read more: Healthcare Analytics Reaches New Heights with SAP HANA

Cost of outsourcing custom healthcare software development

When it comes to the healthcare industry, the average cost of an experienced developer is not cheap. That is why 59% of global companies outsource software development. While the costs vary from country to country, you will still save about 40-70% of the total costs. For example, the average hourly cost for a software developer in the US is $65–$130 per hour while the hourly cost of offshore developers in Asia and Africa is $20–45.

Why choose Fingent?

If you need custom healthcare software for your organization, Fingent is your trusted partner.

• We have a pool of experienced and skilled developers who can help you identify the right solution for your business complexities.
• Our agile methodology of development ensures client involvement at every stage so that the solution is scalable, cost-effective, as well as caters to specific client requirements.
• We offer transparent offshore development services in terms of overhead costs and recruitment fees.

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the need for custom healthcare software development cannot be denied. Our developers are not only affordable but can add much value in terms of talent and skill to your organization. Connect with our experts today!

The pandemic has derailed the global economy, impacting businesses across the world. If organizations wish to keep up with the lightning pace of app and platform improvements while staying cyber secure, they must rely on DevOps. DevOps is crucial to business success more than ever.

But before you start your journey with DevOps let’s take a look at what DevOps is. What are the advantages of DevOps? How can you maximize its potential for your business? Read on to find out.

What Is DevOps?

DevOps is a term derived from combining “development” and “operations.” According to Gartner, “DevOps represents a change in IT culture, focusing on rapid IT service delivery through the adoption of agile, lean practices in the context of a system-oriented approach.”

In simple terms, it is a coordination of best practices that automate and integrate the processes between software development and the IT teams. This cross-disciplinary practice enables enterprises to create and improve products faster than traditional software development methods.

Implementing DevOps allows enterprises to have a competitive edge in value and value management. It allows teams to adapt to the changing market and address their customers’ needs effectively.

Read more: DevOps: The Catalyst to Efficient Project Development and Delivery

Tangible Benefits of DevOps

1. Maximizes efficiency

DevOps ensures the quality of application updates. Armed with the logging and monitoring mechanism of DevOps, developers can now oversee the real-time performance of the products.

This will help them make any necessary changes or improvements ensuring the efficiency of the software. Continuous testing enhances the software quality. Plus, it will be more reliable to function consistently and seamlessly.

2. Better communication and cooperation

A DevOps software development culture contributes to happier and more productive teams as its primary focus is on performance. This team spirit helps in building trust that leads to unitedly working to innovate more effectively.

When teams work together with DevOps, they do not wait for a different team to solve problems. Instead, they work toward a common goal focusing on bringing the product to market or production.

3. Faster Innovation

The success of an enterprise depends on its ability to innovate faster than its competitors. Since DevOps collaborates both development and operation efforts, the development cycle is shorter and the applications are ready faster.

4. Reduced implementation failure

Implementation failure can occur due to programming defects. Since DevOps promotes frequent code versions it is easy to detect defects early. This reduces the number of implementation failures. Additionally, recovery is much faster as the teams share ideas and together tackle the challenges of both teams.

5. Cost-effective

Automated testing and CI/CD aid in efficient bug-free codes. Hence, it eliminates the need to combat network downtime and avoid spending additional costs on other related issues.

DevOps automation accelerates the software release pipeline and cuts down on manual interventions. Thus, it minimizes software release costs. Moreover, early detection of defects saves consequent financial damages. Subsequently, DevOps increases profitability while reducing both direct and indirect costs.

Read more: Test Automation In DevOps For Expediting Software Development

6. Customer satisfaction

Customer satisfaction is crucial for businesses to thrive and profit. The constant flow of feedback mechanism of DevOps allows customers to rate the product and its updates. Their feedback will help developers to improve the product.

Besides, customers can keep tabs on the progress of the application with the help of loop feedback. This contributes to customer satisfaction as they now can see the agility in the software development process. As a result, your business can and will gain a competitive advantage in your sector.

Key Features Of DevOps

• Code: Everything in DevOps is version-controlled as code along with data.
• Continuous: Emphasis is on continuity of integration, deployment, and testing.
• Collaboration: Strong collaboration between the operations, development, and security teams is at the heart of DevOps.
• Fail fast: Robust automation, tooling, and processes in DevOps help in identifying problems faster preventing delays in the rollout of new features.
• Automated environment provisioning: This enables consistency across deployment ensuring reliable release.
• Security: This involves all security measures ranging from static security code analysis to vulnerability management.

DevOps Lifecycle

DevOps consists of multiple phases that collectively become the DevOps lifecycle. These phases ensure DevOps optimizes all development processes. Here is a phase-wise break-down of the DevOps lifecycle:

1. Continuous development

This is the first phase where planning and software coding takes place. The planning involves understanding the project and developers begin developing the code for the application. Though planning does not require any tools, maintaining code requires a number of tools.

2. Continuous integration

In the phase of continuous integration, new codes are built and integrated into the existing code. The source code is modified several times on a weekly or daily basis. The continuous integration of new code helps reflect the changes that the customers experience with the updated code.

3. Continuous testing

At this stage, the developed software is continuously tested for bugs with the help of automated tools. This phase can be repositioned around the continuous integration phase as well.

Testing helps developers save effort and time that is usually lost in manual testing. Plus, reports generated help them improve the test evaluation process. This ensures flawless functionality and inter-networking of the application.

4. Continuous feedback

Continuous feedback allows for further analysis of the improvements. The feedback from customers is assessed promptly enabling the developer to release new versions of the software application.

5. Continuous monitoring

This phase is of key importance for application developers as it sustains the availability of services in the application. Continuous monitoring helps determine the root causes of recurring system errors and helps resolve security issues and other problems.

6. Continuous deployment

Although continuous deployment takes place before continuous monitoring, developers ensure that this phase remains active throughout the DevOps lifecycle. Containerization tools are used to achieve continuous deployment. This nullifies all sorts of production failures and system errors.

7. Continuous operations

This is the shortest of all phases. The continuous operation allows developers to automate the process and accelerate the time-to-market for the application.

Use of DevOps in Different Industries

Manufacturing industries: The use of DevOps in car manufacturing can help manufacturers identify errors early on in the production process.

Online financial trading companies: DevOps reduces the overall process time and increases the customer base. DevOps contributes to a drastic reduction in regression testing time which in turn reduced the funding period.

Read more: Prepare for the Future of Digital Innovation with these 10 Services From Fingent

Get Faster, Bigger, and Better with DevOps

It is clear that the DevOps strategy benefits enterprise software development in many ways. DevOps take the legwork out of the software development process and has emerged to be a crucial component for the growth of a business. DevOps provides a wide range of benefits that are measurable and real in implementation.

DevOps can create an astounding long-term impact for internet-based businesses. All businesses need DevOps for faster testing and implementations.

If you are not adopting DevOps practices in your technology projects, then you are increasing the risk of delay on your technology projects and increasing technical debt. The longer you wait, the more effort is required to implement DevOps into your workflow. So, if you are considering implementing DevOps, act quickly! Call us today.

Planning a software development project for your business? Here’s a detailed guide on the various stages and life-cycle of Software Product Development!

• Introduction
• What Is Software Product Development?
• How To Gauge When Your Business Needs Software Product Development?
• How To Prepare For Software Product Development
• 5 Essential Stages Of Software Product Development
• Tips To Select The Right Partners For Software Product Development
• Healthier, Better Business With Software Product Development

A Quick Guide on the Cloud Service Models – Saas, IaaS, Paas!

The world is changing, quickly and fast; and to adapt to these growing changes, businesses are experiencing unprecedented stress on maintaining a robust and cost-effective IT Infrastructure. But thanks to Cloud Computing and its various service models – Saas, IaaS, Paas, businesses now have the option to move beyond on-premise IT Infrastructure for improved processing and storage capacity.

The future of computing is in the cloud! Missing out on it can definitely slow down the progress and performance abilities of a company. But before we dig deeper on how to seamlessly deploy Cloud Computing, let’s shed some light on what is cloud computing and what are cloud service models?

What is Cloud Computing?

If simply put, Cloud Computing is a model that offers convenient, on-demand network access to a pool of shared resources. This may include data storage, databases, servers, networking, tools, or any other resources that can be accessed through the internet. Speaking of cloud server models, cloud computing is offered in various service models, each of which satisfies unique business requirements. These servers are mainly of three types: Software as a Service (SaaS), Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), and Platform as a Service (PaaS), about which you will read in detail below.

Once signed up with cloud service models Saas, IaaS, and Paas, one can leverage wider possibilities to bring flexibility and efficiency to support greater business growth. Enterprise cloud platforms like InfinCE makes this transition to the cloud even more seamless, providing the right security, control, and flexibility to scale and adapt with time.

Over the years cloud services have witnessed exponential growth worldwide. The global cloud computing market size was valued at USD 274.79 billion in 2020. It is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 19.1% from 2021 to 2028. With the COVID19 pandemic giving rise to remote work culture, and with many industries gaining opportunities from advanced technologies like AI and machine learning, cloud computing is turning key with its ability to empower businesses with the flexibility to innovate and transform with growing technologies.

Fig: U.S. Cloud Computing Market, Source – Grand View Research

What these reports signify is a steady adoption of cloud services by businesses across the world to tackle the entire range of operations they do. Application development in cloud computing provides an extensive, flexible, and affordable way to implement cloud service models. Meanwhile, numerous leading players in the information technology sector now compete to deliver flexible cloud services for both the public and enterprises.

Increasing competition means better delivery of services and innovations, which can deeply benefit scaling up your business. Hence, now is the right time to deploy a cloud model into your business infrastructure.

What’s Ahead?

• Why does your business need Cloud Computing?
• What are Cloud Service Models?
• Adopting Cloud – Choosing between SaaS, IaaS, and PaaS
• SaaS
• IaaS
• PaaS
• What should you know about DaaS?
• Why is it important to choose the right Cloud Service Model?
• How can Cloud support your Custom Software needs?
• Cloud Service Models SaaS, IaaS, or PaaS: What fits your business?

A comprehensive guide to web application development in 2021

• Introduction
• What is a Web Application?
• What is Web Application Development?
• Web Apps vs Mobile Apps
• Types of Web Applications
• Technology Stacks for Web Application Development
• Benefits of Web Application Development
• Web Application Development Process
• Web Application Development Validation & Deployment
• Web Application Development Trends
• The Cost of Developing a Web Application
• FAQs About Web Application Development
• Develop Your Web Application with Fingent

A comprehensive guide to developing mobile apps in 2021 and beyond!

• Introduction
• What is Mobile Application Development
• Types of Mobile Applications
• Mobile Application Development Platforms
• Mobile Application Development Process
• Mobile Application Front-end and Back-end
• End-to-end Mobile App Testing
• The Cost to Develop a Mobile App
• Five Reasons Why Mobile Apps Fail and How to Prevent The Let-down
• Tips for Building Successful Mobile Apps
• Develop Your Mobile Application with Fingent

Custom patient engagement platforms improve caregiver-patient interactions today. Here’s how. 

With the COVID-19 pandemic restricting face-to-face engagement, patients have started using telehealth (telemedicine) technology and other digital channels to receive healthcare services. The growth of digital healthcare will increase the demand for healthcare technologies in the future. 81% of people (patients) want healthcare providers to know them individually and deliver more personalized and meaningful experiences.

While support programs like teleconsulting do not replace the physical presence of healthcare providers, they offer valued information, which is the need of the hour. With stay-at-home mandates, social distancing, and lockdowns, telemedicine is the vital care model that boosts patient engagement today. Personalized patient engagement fosters trust among patients and ensures continuity of care. So, in times of pandemic and beyond, patient engagement platforms will play a crucial role.

Read more: 5 ways to optimize the revenue of your medical practice and clinical processes 

Patient engagement and its growing significance

In simple terms, patient engagement is a concept where patients are actively involved and considered important decision-makers in their care.

Engaged patients are:

• Informed- as they understand their health status and the treatment.
• Empowered- as they believe they can change their health outcomes.
• Heard- as they can communicate with their providers better and participate in shared decision-making.

What is a patient engagement platform (PEP)?

A patient engagement platform is an application that enables patients to interact with healthcare providers via their mobile device, tablet, or computer. The patient engagement platform keeps the patients involved beyond the four walls of the hospital.

When implemented effectively, patient engagement platforms can help streamline access to medical records, provide appointment reminders, enable self-scheduling for patients, and deliver patient education or awareness.

How do patient engagement platforms help?

Patient engagement platforms (PEPs) can help automate the following processes.

• Send reminders to patients regarding their postoperative treatment protocols
• Allow patients to update mobility reports and pain score
• Deliver educational content
• Manage images of wounds
• Record and monitor health vitals like BP, FBS, BMI, etc.

Read more: 7 major impacts of technology in healthcare

What are the benefits of a patient engagement platform?

1. Ease the patient engagement process

A customized patient engagement platform helps improve your patient experience by assisting them in scheduling medical appointments. It can also help notify patients about their next visit to the clinic, or when they need to check their health vitals, or when their current medication course will be over. In addition, caregivers can use the patient engagement platform to track a patient’s medical history and use the data to channelize treatment plans when the patient pays a second visit.

2. Enable caregivers to focus on core competencies

With a patient engagement platform in place, patients can fill in medical forms, electronically scan their insurance cards, and consent from their mobiles, laptops, or computers. It will allow healthcare providers to focus on their core competencies and saves patients from standing in queues or long wait times. In addition, it can expedite the care delivery process during an emergency.

Case Study: Fingent partnered with Casenet’s Advanced Solutions Group to develop TruCare Insights as a reliable population health management platform. Download Now!

3. Empower care providers to make informed decisions

Healthcare organizations can use information like satisfaction scores, online appointments, wait times, and ROI to make informed decisions related to staffing and identify opportunities for improvement. Custom patient engagement platforms allow clinicians to track all this information effectively. It goes a long way in supporting clinical decision-making.

4. Optimize healthcare throughput

Patient engagement platforms allow online registration that ensures patients have less waiting time in the clinic. It enables healthcare providers to attend to more patients in a given time and improve data accuracy and demographics. In addition, patient engagement platforms spare medical professionals from time-consuming and manual data management processes so that they get time to receive advanced medical training. Nurses, physicians, administrators, and other hospital staff members can streamline their communication, increase staff satisfaction, and utilize data analytics to make strategic decisions.

Benefits to the patients:

• Patients are aware of the next steps, such as diet plans, exercises, medication plans, or next clinical visit
• Consistent and transparent care will be available 24/7
• Augmented patient engagement and experience
• Improved communication lowers preoperative stress and anxiety

Case Study: How did a data analytics solution help NHS gain financial, clinical, and geographical insights to improve visibility over their KPIs? Read Now! 

What to look for in a custom patient engagement platform?

Given the changes in patient behavior, expectations, and changing healthcare landscape, healthcare providers will have to ramp up patient engagement strategies and implement the latest engagement technologies. Patient engagement platforms must enable providers to determine the best ways to deploy their expertise and services to their patients.

Read more: Digital tools reshaping the healthcare industry

So, make sure the patient engagement platform has the following capabilities.

1. EMR integration

The patient engagement platform should integrate with Electronic Medical Records (EMR). For example, the platform should receive data from the EMR, such as a referral or recall, and revert to the EMR.

2. Sentiment analysis

The main aim of patient engagement is to understand patients on a deeper, emotional level. So, it is crucial to leverage sentiment analysis technology. This will enable providers to recognize when a patient is happy or frustrated and respond accordingly.

3. Real-time and interactive patient communication

The platform must encourage bidirectional communication, specifically text-based messaging. In short, patients must be able to communicate with their health system easily.

4. Chatbot functionality and keyword actions

The use of chatbots and keywords in patient engagement platforms is trending. It helps reduce human intervention. So, the patient engagement platform should allow for automated responses to common questions such as “where are you located?” The platform must also enable keywords to trigger automation, such as scheduling a ride for patients who need a lift.

Read more: 5 leading chatbot use cases explained with real-life examples

5. Patient on-boarding

The platform should drive patients to the patient portal and help them register quickly and conveniently to get medical support on time.

6. Integration with other vendors

A single app can’t solve it all. It is just not feasible and is also not in your patient’s best interests. Make sure that your patient engagement platform integrates seamlessly with your other vendors. For example, the platform can offer billing features or even integrate with medical billing software, medical invoice management software, etc.

7. Boost employee adoption

Your staff must like and accept the patient engagement platform. If they don’t appreciate the new technology, it won’t fulfill its potential. In addition, you must ensure that the patient engagement platform enjoys enterprise-wide adoption and has a user-friendly UX and UI.

8. Offer multilingual support

As not all patients speak English, you will have to ensure that the platform supports different languages used or spoken widely by your patients.

Read more: 5 essentials to an effective healthcare application 

Why should you adopt a custom patient engagement platform?

A custom patient engagement platform is specifically developed for your organization to cover your unique healthcare requirements and cater to your internal processes.

As such a platform is built from scratch, it gives you the freedom of choice for technology. Additionally, you can easily integrate this platform with third-party systems because you get to control the code entirely. Also, you will have full ownership of the final product and customize the software according to any relevant changes in your organization.

Benefits of a custom patient engagement platform

• High scalability
• Seamless integration to your existing infrastructure
• Enables integration with any new services you are willing to include in your medical practice
• Freedom to choose the technology
• Gain full ownership of the resulting solution

Custom patient engagement platform is best suited for medical practices that:

• Offer a wide range of services
• Plan to expand in size and services
• Have rigid workflows that are difficult to adapt
• Want to integrate the new solution with the existing system

Read more: The application and impact of information technology in healthcare

Develop your custom patient engagement platform with Fingent

At Fingent, we have the expertise and work closely with you to build a custom patient engagement platform to suit your business needs. Our experts help you select the best web development frameworks, database and backend technologies, data visualization formats, and leading front-end technologies to develop your patient engagement platform or any medical software that you would require.

Fingent helps you develop healthcare application platforms tailored to your needs, with top features like appointment scheduling, medical billing, patient feedback management, payment processing, chatbot, and fundamental to in-depth analytics. To know more, please get in touch with us.

How CEOs Can Gain Value from Software Development Outsourcing

In-house creation of a complete and sophisticated software application requires large amounts of resources and time. Maintaining an in-house team amid the coronavirus lockdowns has added to this and become increasingly complex. Frankly, in these turbulent economic times, software development outsourcing can prove more profitable to your business than ever before. 

Software development outsourcing offers limitless possibilities to CEOs. As the world is connected by the power of the internet, you can access the talent you would normally be hard-pressed to find. Additionally, finding an expert offshore software development company that meets your fast-approaching deadlines is another benefit. 

As CEO of your company, before you take full advantage of software development outsourcing, you need to know how you can leverage outsourcing effectively. Here is a comprehensive guide that will help you understand various aspects of the offshore software development process and prepare you to face the challenges it can bring your way.

Does Your Business Need Offshore Software Development? 

For most businesses, hiring an offshore development partner’s services has helped them breathe easy and take the load off their shoulder. Here are a few scenarios where the offshore software development model will prove to be the best solution for your company.

1. Do you require talent with narrow expertise?

Software development outsourcing improves the quality of your team as it gives you access to a vast talent pool with narrow specialization. Such resources allow you to leverage both international perspectives and onboard the best talent. 

2. Do you need to scale your team?

If you lack an excellent in-house team that can undertake multiple projects simultaneously, it is time to consider offshore software development. This allows you to scale up your team of experts without spending a fortune or risking output quality. 

3. Do you want to concentrate on your product?

Software development outsourcing can help you automate most mundane operations such as payroll and accounting. This will help you concentrate on the growth of your company and innovation.

Read more: Offshoring Software Development: Here’s All You Need to Know

Advantages of Software Development Outsourcing

Software development outsourcing can help your company experience higher production levels without spending too much money or energy. Partnering with the offshore software development team will help you carry out temporary tasks, improve the pace of your growth, and reduce your labor costs. In other words, it gives your company a much-coveted competitive advantage by improving customer service while ensuring limited-budget product quality. Here are some specific benefits of offshore software development.

1. Saves costs

Cost-saving is one of the most significant benefits of software development outsourcing. Whether you want to scale up your employees or scale down, outsourcing a whole project is much cheaper than hiring each developer separately. The difference in salaries across the globe can save you millions of dollars. Offshore development allows you to get the same amount of work done, with the same quality, in the same amount of time at a much lesser cost as different countries have different living costs. For example, the average offshore software development rate in India per hour is $30, whereas, in the USA, the hourly developer rate will cost around $100.  

2. Flexibility  

Once you offshore your development requirements, you do not have to spend time recruiting, training, and housing new employees. Besides, it is impossible and impractical to hire a full-time in-house contractor for your short-term projects. Software development outsourcing gives you the option of choosing developers for a single project. You can find talent that fits perfectly without investing in a permanent position. This will give your core team some relief as they can concentrate on mission-critical activities essential to run the company and focus on the development process. 

3. Saves time

Offshore software development relieves you from searching for new developers and preparing them to suit your needs. It can also improve speed to market as it helps your management and key employees to focus on the core business. Since it can eliminate secondary tasks, you can redistribute your services for more essential aspects of the organization. 

4. Centered approach

One of the most competitive advantages is the ability to have a focused strategy. If the in-house team needs to deal with several projects simultaneously, they may be forced to compromise on quality. However, Software development outsourcing can streamline your business process. This will allow your employees to take a centered approach and produce high-quality output within the set timelines. 

5. Technological advantages

Businesses seeking to gain a competitive advantage will develop cutting-edge innovations using the latest technologies without expending an additional amount of time and resources in learning them themselves. This is possible when they team up with strategic offshore development partners with a proven track record. 

6. Compensate for the lack of in-house experience

Software development outsourcing can bring in additional knowledge and power to reach your business goals. Outsourcing offers the flexibility to use your resources where there is a need as it allows you to scale up or scale down as required. It means that you can either let go of certain talent in one field while allowing you to quickly add specialists to your pool of experts in another field. You can employ a team of varying size, complexity, and cost.  Such a team will be able to find optimal solutions contributing to the growth of your company.

Read more: Why Software Development Outsourcing is a Smart Move Now 

Best practices to follow while offshoring software development

Here are a few points to consider when you decide to outsource your software development project:

• Get introduced to all the developers who are supposed to work on your project.
• Ensure to have a full-time on-shore lead and an offshore lead to help establish necessary coding standards, solve technical issues, and mentor the offshore team.
• Use video conferencing to arrange regular meetings to handle any problems and resolve the same in a timely and efficient manner.
• Use appropriate tracking tools (project management tools) to plan tasks efficiently and prioritize work accordingly.

Read more: Selecting the Right Engagement Model for Business Software Development 

Offshore Software Development with Fingent

Since 2003, Fingent has been a reliable and capable offshore partner for leading global brands, including many Fortune 500 companies. With an impeccable track record as an offshore software development team, Fingent has helped improve cash flow and increase business efficiency for many clients. We help your organization scale up as required without the need to hire or fire any of your team members. 

Our diverse offshore talent pool includes experienced developers and tech professionals who leverage the latest software development trends, such as automation, cloud computing, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR), 3D Web Configurator, Robotic Process Automation (RPA), Mobile application development (native, hybrid), Microsoft solutions, SAP solutions, and so on. 

Our experts are available to provide you with inputs on your project. Let’s get talking and find out which process fits your project.