Quality Assurance Metrics That Matter In Healthcare Application Testing

Today, healthcare services are moving towards digital transformation to provide better healthcare services in advanced terms and conditions. So, healthcare organizations need extra featured applications with quality assurance to cope with trends and technology of digital transformation and patient health demand.

Here comes the role of mobile application testing services companies that help develop healthcare apps with modern technology and maintain quality assurance through different metrics to enhance application reliability and user experiences.

To reduce the manual effort, different metrics guides help provide insight into the automation testing, its coverage, bug finding, and fixing; overall, to speed up the test execution process and increase reliability, metrics guides play a significant role in achieving the best result.

Understanding Quality Assurance In Healthcare Application

As per a report by Grand View Research, the healthcare software application market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 15.08% from 2024 to 2030 with the rise of smartphones throughout these years.

So, every healthcare application needs to maintain quality, flexibility, and a user-friendly interface. So, quality assurance in healthcare application testing services is a definite approach every developer should follow.

Let’s talk about the role of healthcare application services in patient data management:

• Healthcare applications store patients’ private data and their respective diseases in a secure platform that is confidential according to health guide protocol. Any wrongdoing or activities may lead to a lawsuit against the app, or expensive upgrades to the application may lead to high-cost investments and impact the patient’s reliability.
• So, a smooth performance journey should be a necessary step to achieve a quality user experience. It can be achieved through repetitive quality assurance testing, which helps to maintain the patients’ private data and maintains its overall functionality.
• Healthcare applications should focus on intuitive navigation for normal patients as well as those who are suffering from disabilities. So that they can easily use the layout of the apps hassle-free and get the necessary services based on their health conditions.

Key Quality Assurance Metrics In Healthcare Application Testing

1. Test Coverage

Test coverage is a software testing technique that determines whether the application code is covered by certain test cases. It helps to identify bugs in the early stages, reduce all types of redundancy, and boost ROI.

There are several ways to measure the test coverage; they are as follows:

• Unit Testing- In this testing coverage, all the individual codes are tested individually to check the functionality and find the bugs in the code logic. These code logics cover the statements, branches, and functions by using different test cases.
• Integration Testing- This testing coverage tests multiple codes simultaneously by making them in a group format. This test helps determine the interactions between different components to identify any integration default.
• System Testing- As the name suggests, this test covers all the integral systems of the application using different test scenarios or use cases to check the application’s compliance and provide a detailed analysis report.
• Acceptance Testing- The testing determines the end-user experience to check whether the developed app should launch from the user’s perspective.

The benchmarks for effective test coverage in healthcare application testing include reliability in securing patients’ private data, compatibility with human factor accessibility, greater user experience, and secured enabled platform to maintain patient data and regulatory standards.

Also Read: Top Test Management Tools For 2024: Enhance Your QA Process

2. Defect Density

Defect density is nothing but the number of confirmed bugs present in a software module during the development phase. In other words, it is the ratio of the number of bugs to the size of the software, which is determined in ppm or parts per million.

It helps in determining the defective parts and their improvement, readiness to launch in the market, weak areas, and compatibility with other versions of software.

Steps to calculate the defect density:

1. Determine the number of defects within the code module. Whether it is a multi-code module or a single module, identification of the code module helps determine the components that require extra modification.
2. After you determine all the defects or bugs, add the number of defects found in the module or modules to calculate the total number of defects. If you have multiple code modules, then suppose you found two defects in one module, four defects in the second module, and three defects in the third module; then the total number of defects will be nine.
3. Each module contains certain code lines. So, after finding the number of defects, calculate the total number of code lines. Let’s take an example to determine the number of code lines. Suppose you have 300 code lines in the first module and 400 code lines in the second one, and then the total code lines will be 700.
4. The next thing you will calculate is the defense density. To determine this, you should find the ratio between the number of defects and the total number of code lines. Suppose your number of defects is 6 and code lines are 3600; then the defect density is 6 divided by 3600, which is approximately 0.0017.

A Defect density in the Healthcare industry for mobile app testing is determined by any operational event that can cause harm to the patient data.

3. Defect Detection Percentage

Defect Detection Percentage or defect removal for efficiency determines the application’s efficacy. In simple words, defect detection percentage or DDP is the ratio between the number of defects counted before the release of a software product and defects found after the launch to the users.

To calculate DDP, one can consider a simple formula which is:

DDP or Defect Detection Percentage = (the number of defects found during the launching of the software version / total number of defects found after releasing it to the customer) multiplied by 100.

Another way to calculate the defect detection percentage is to accurately calculate the defects in the affected version, the release date when the software is released, and those defects that are escaped during software release.

Another criterion that determines the defect detection percentage is dimension. The dimension can be determined through the affected version’s release date and how customers are using the version.

It is successfully determined by a line chart in which the released version is changing its momentum in defect finding. A bar chart also helps calculate the defect detection percentage by calculating each sprint during the software release of the defective version.

The target percentage for high-quality applications, as per the industry standard for minor defects, is around 4%. More than 4% can be considered as major defects, which can’t be acceptable from the users’ point of view. On average, the average defect percentage as per industry quality standard is 2.5%.

4. Mean Time To Detect

The Mean Time To Detect or MTTD is a parameter used by the mobile app testing company that is a key performance indicator or KPI used to determine how long a software problem has existed in the system.

In healthcare application services, problems are detected by patients while using the app, and they may face some issues while operating the app.

To boost the MTDT, the following steps should be taken to enhance productivity.

1. Regular monitoring of mean time to detect issues, fix, and optimize them can help in minimizing the MTTD rate in the future.
2. Enabling automatic analysis of the event, its pattern, and incidence helps in reducing the MTTD efficiently.
3. Instead of identifying the immediate issues, trying to find out the root causes of the issues and fixing the vulnerabilities can help reduce the mean time to detect ratios.
4. The testing company should have high-quality and advanced technology to detect issues transparently and track the progress that should be visible.

The impact of MTTD on application is as follows:

1. Provides faster reactions or responses to software threats. That means quick identification, fixing vulnerabilities, and maintaining reliability.
2. It can be cost-saving, as detecting and resolving the issues in the meantime saves you money and software testing and development time.
3. Finding and fixing it in the meantime helps improve the system’s operation without any disruption.
4. The MTTD also helps in making your healthcare application adhere to regulatory standards and regulations.
5. It also helps in system performance due to the early detection of bugs or defects and fixing them to smoothly run the applications by the end users or patients.

Advanced Metrics For In-Depth Analysis

1. Automated Test Percentage

The automated test percentage for the ratio of automated tests to total tests helps determine the test automation progress and how it should be adjusted in the test strategy. To calculate the percentage, one can apply the formula:

Automated test percentage=( total number of automatic test cases / total number of test cases) * 100

The benefits of automation in testing healthcare application services are as follows:

1. As healthcare applications contain different patients’ internal data such as name, contact number, address, disease types, etc., with automation, inputting each data can be easy, which can reduce the manpower that takes lots of time to manually put each data.
2. Automatic tests in healthcare applications enable the software quality assurance team to authorize the patient’s data securely.
3. As healthcare sectors have lots of patient visits per day, repetition of patient data input manually can be difficult. So, with automation, data can be stored in a repository by inputting only the patient’s information rather than putting the entire outline.
4. Audit trait verification is another benefit that protects the system from unauthorized access to patients’ data by intruders. The automated test scripts for the healthcare domain help secure the system from suspicious activity.
5. Healthcare sectors have several departments and their respective patients. So, maintaining a proper record of each patient’s data as per the department with verified belongings is a major advantage in software auto testing in healthcare applications.
6. One of the major advantages of software auto-testing healthcare applicants is the time-saving manner in which it is used. As the test process involves early detection of issues and fixing them, the chance of error fixing after the product launch and use by both the healthcare providers and patients is seamless and bug-free.

Some steps to follow to increase the automation in testing are as follows:

1. Firstly, identify the part that needs to go in automation or automatic testing services.
2. The next step you can follow is choosing the right tool that can enhance the test automation process and has the desired feature that can increase the efficiency of software applications.
3. Identify the test coverage of the software automation tools. Check whether the objectives match your application requirement goals.
4. Then, performance metrics will be enabled to evaluate the test coverage in automated testing services.
5. Then, measure the test maintenance.

To measure the test automation process, you can follow the following steps.

1. Define your test objectives for the automated testing process.
2. Then, identify your risk areas and mark them for the automatic testing coverages.
3. Ensuring the testing environment is suitable to enhance the automated test process.
4. Then, execute your test cases that will go through the automation process and prepare a detailed report for future requirements.
5. After that, analyze your results and check whether it is up to the user’s expectations to enable the overall functionalities of the developed software.

2. User Satisfaction Score

After developing a software product, it is necessary to find ways to gather the users’ feedback, which is required for quality checking and improvements. One can gather feedback in many ways, such as making surveys, reviews, prototype testing, interviews, analytics tools, e-mails, etc.

To interpret user satisfaction scores, one can take into consideration the following two metrics:

1. CES or Customer Effort Score- The score determines how easily a customer surfs on the app to get his / her desired products and buy them to fulfill a goal.
2. NPS or Net Promoter Score- It is like taking reviews from the customers and sharing their experiences with their known ones to increase customer loyalty regarding the application services.

Let’s discuss how one can incorporate feedback into continuous improvement processes:

1. Set your defined goals to collect user feedback.
2. Choose the perfect analytics tools where users can easily give their reviews or feedback about your applications, services, or developed products.
3. Communicate with your users regarding their feedback without disrespecting them.
4. Try to enhance the exchange of feedback and collaborate with them to get ideas about the improvement.
5. Lastly, always take follow-up for feedback and start improving as per the user’s demand. As the customer satisfaction score determines the satisfaction level of customers on your developed product, try to improve the score to achieve the top score, which is 100.

Also Read: Turbocharge Your Tests: Performance Testing Best Practices

Implementing Metrics Effectively

1. Integration Into The Developing Life Cycle

For effective implementation of QA metrics, some of the best practices are:

1. Plan your test process in a defined manner that should be well-planned in a document form. Documents are a way of communication between team members.
2. For good planning, you should keep certain things in mind, such as creating a test policy for quality management, setting your test strategy for manual and automatic testing, executing your test plans, and running the test cases.
3. Then, go for software-driven management to drive the test cases and enable pair programming.
4. After that, plan your software testing in the early stage of development. Early-stage testing helps identify bugs or errors in the initial stage and reduces the cost and time of error detection for future use.
5. After that, a formal review is a way to determine whether the testing process is going smoothly with the team members or reviewers. Then, the reviewers call for a walkthrough meeting to determine the bugs that may be present in the code.
6. After finding the bugs, it’s time to set the testing environment for the Quality Assurance testing team and their defined roles in testing the quality of the products in different testing modes.
7. Now comes the role of acceptance testing that enhances customer satisfaction with your developed products. From checking overall functionalities to checking any type of error, stability, and reliability, acceptance testing plays various major roles.
8. After the acceptance testing passes the examination, it’s time to check the application’s compatibility with different browsers and devices and load test it in various difficult data traffic.
9. Then, the application goes for two major formal methods of testing, exploratory testing, and ad-hoc testing, to determine whether the app should pass the test in predetermined test cases.
10. Now comes the final part: checking code quality through different testing tools to determine whether the code should comply with the performance of developed apps. Also, the code quality checks the reliability, efficiency, and security of the software app.

Another major to integrate into the development life cycle is the continuous monitoring and updating of metrics that translate the metrics as per the business value and insights of the good user experience.

2. Tools and Technologies

Some tools to track and analyze the metrics are:

1. Feedback tools- These tools determine customer satisfaction as well as team members’ opinions regarding the development and communication between the team members.
2. Zoho Analytics- This tool helps to convert raw data into dashboards. Also, with an AI-integrated assistant, it is easy to generate reports on patterns and trends.
3. App Metrica- It is used to test A/B testing of software applications and cohort analysis that supports both Android and IOS operating systems.
4. Knowledge Base- It is a central repository system that stores all the internal data of a software app. It also helps retrieve and collect raw data.
5. Google Analytics- The tool determines the website traffic or application’s visitors graph using different analyzing graphs.
6. Hubspot- One of the analytics tools that helps to determine customer resource management and insights into the customer’s interest while searching for a particular product.
7. Sprout Social- This tool is the best reporting tool that helps users provide a report on usability and also helps team members raise reports or feedback on the developed products for improvisation.
8. Bounce Rate- This tool determines the bounce rate of your developed application, where a user comes and moves back within a few seconds without visiting the second page.

Some tools tailored to healthcare applications that are used by a healthcare application testing company are as follows:

1. EHR Management Systems- Electronic medical records management systems help store, manage, and share patients’ information.
2. Telemedicine Platform- This platform enables virtual consultation at any time, at the patient’s convenience, through video calls between the patient and health care providers.
3. Cyber Security Tools- As healthcare applications have sensitive data about patients’ conditions and other related information, it is recommended that cybersecurity testing tools be enforced to enhance the software application process.
4. Data Analysis Tools- These tools help store and implement the patient’s diagnoses and help with digital decision-making.
5. CRM Tools- These tools help with inpatient visits, consultations, treatment measures, reminders, and personal communication with healthcare providers and patients.
6. BPM Tools- These tools help in the operational activities of hospital management services. It helps provide quick and automatic clinical services in the healthcare sector.

While incorporating the testing process in healthcare sectors, salesforce application testing service companies should keep the above testing tools for effective management of the software application development.

Maximizing The Impact with Tailored Healthcare App Tests

Quality Assurance in Healthcare Application testing services is necessary to ensure the functionality and reliability of the software applications that store, share, and maintain the patient’s data as well as the internal clinical services.

So, it is important to test the quality of the apps through different testing methods and tools that will enhance the healthcare services more precisely and increase the patient’s usability and satisfaction.