Low Code in Healthcare: Key to Driving Efficiency, Innovation, and Digital Transformation

Introduction 

Large enterprises, governments, and start-ups are exploring the use of artificial intelligence in healthcare. For instance, Matt Pavelle and Dr. Adam Oskowitz, co-founders of Doctronic, are being recognized for their innovative platform—a private and personal AI (artificial intelligence) doctor, trained by the world’s leading human doctors on the latest medical data. This platform aims to increase accessibility to primary care and overcome the challenges of severe physician shortage, high wait times, and complex reimbursement processes.

Due to growing emphasis on patient-centered care, low-code software development is gaining focus for its advantages, such as fulfillment of patient expectations, intelligent automation, and robust integration, among other benefits. Low-code in healthcare offers agility and speed where healthcare providers can deliver superior experiences to patients. Let’s understand the scope of low-code in healthcare industry and explore its key use cases for improving patient care and assistance.

Understanding Low-Code in Healthcare

But before we jump into the details of low-code-no-code, let’s understand the difference between low-code and traditional development. Traditional software development requires developers to implement a diverse range of tools and functions to build applications. Whereas low-code development requires a small set of tools to create applications without much hassle.

Platforms like Mendix, Appian, and Microsoft Power Apps are growing prominent for low-code development in healthcare. Tech leaders and healthcare providers are using low-code-no-code to accelerate the development of customized applications. LCNC platforms are helping healthcare professionals and staff to reduce IT shadow since these platforms eliminate the issue of additional cost associated with traditional application development.

Challenges in Healthcare IT That Low Code Solves

Low-code in healthcare is rapidly evolving due to the need for streamlined operations, enhanced patient care, and adherence to stringent regulations. Let’s look at some challenges that are being solved with low-code-no-code innovation. 

1. Data Silos: One of the primary challenges in the healthcare industry is the issue of data silos. Oftentimes, healthcare institutions operate in silos, leading to fragmented data in terms of medical records and patient information. To overcome this challenge, low-code app development in healthcare systems is emerging as a solution with the help of unified data models and real-time data synchronization.
    
2. Bridging Digital Adoption Gaps: In dynamically evolving economies like India, healthcare leaders are introducing low-code apps and platforms since they are easy to understand and have simple yet powerful interfaces. Such trends are boosting the adoption of digital apps and tools.
    
3. Minimize Costs to Develop Apps: Since healthcare systems are under pressure to continuously meet increasing patient demands, tech leaders are implementing low-code-no-code platforms to automate tasks and streamline manual processes. For example, by automating appointment scheduling, patients gain more control over scheduling with 24/7 support.
    
4. Efficient Patient Management: Low-code apps and platforms alleviate the need for extensive coding skills, thus making apps readily available for common users. This enhances patient experience with the help of digital forms for registrations, dashboards, and portals.

Benefits of Low Code in Healthcare

1. Faster Time-to-Market: Low-code application development in healthcare requires less effort with the help of reusable components and pre-built templates. Thus, by speeding up the building process, tech leaders and healthcare institutions can introduce apps faster in the market and make it accessible to common users.
    
2. Improved Collaboration: Low-code-no-code platforms help to improve collaboration between IT professionals and healthcare staff since these platforms alleviate the need for complex technical expertise. For instance, IT teams use their technical capabilities to manage patient records, and the healthcare staff can communicate their needs for specific features required in a given low-code platform.
    
3. Adherence to Regulatory Compliance: Low-code platforms are empowering healthcare providers to comply with stringent regulations since these platforms come with built-in compliance features. These benefits are helping healthcare providers in the U.S. and Europe, owing to stringent regulatory guidelines under HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) and GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation).
    
4. Better Integration: Full-scale IT modernization usually requires twelve to twenty-four months in order to replace outdated legacy systems from healthcare institutions. Such long wait times can be reduced with low-code-no-code solutions using modern third-party technologies and reusable packaged components.
    
5. Intelligent Automation: Since healthcare institutions are considerably large in size and generate huge volumes of data, low-code automation in healthcare can help to minimize repetitive tasks and boost workforce productivity. Healthcare leaders are investing in AI and ML (machine learning) technologies to analyze processes and streamline end-to-end operations.

In addition to the above benefits, here are a few more business benefits that healthcare organizations are embracing for delivering patient-centric care services:

Low Code Use Cases in Healthcare

Growing demands for digitization are creating revenue opportunities for tech leaders in the healthcare industry. Here are some of the low code use cases in healthcare that are bringing technology closer to common users.

1. Telehealth: Low-code development platforms use pre-built components and visual interfaces that reduce the need for complex coding. This is boosting low-code development for telehealth. The advantage of rapid app development helps to readily create and deploy telehealth applications that fulfill the urgent care needs of patients.
    
2. Managing Clinical Supply Chain: LCNC tools provide inventory alerts for critical medicines and supplies. Stockouts for test kits, medications, and PPE not only impact patient care but also violate compliance. Thus, real-time notifications can be directed to supply chain teams through SMS or dashboard updates, and teams can procure supplies, depending on laboratory activities, patient visits, and prescriptions.
    
3. Insurance Claims Management: Since insurance is an important arm of the global healthcare industry, tech leaders are building personalized customer portals and apps to automate routine tasks like customer service, underwriting, and claims processing. Low-code automation in healthcare is helping insurance companies gain a competitive advantage by reducing operational costs like hiring teams for claims processing and underwriting.
    
4. Running Patient Surveys: For holistic improvement of healthcare services at facilities, healthcare leaders are going beyond surgery and collecting feedback through surveys. To achieve this, low-code apps are emerging as a promising solution to automate the routing of forms, so that the feedback is taken and the necessary efforts are taken to track the process in service improvement.
    
5. Staff Supervision and Management: With the help of telemedicine, citizens can not only look into a doctor’s schedule but also gain full visibility over their days and weeks. No-code apps are enabling this trend by authorizing healthcare organizations to monitor their staff in terms of their productivity and workload.

This initiative grew virtual consultations by nearly 50%, reduced administrative time by 40%, and augmented patient-centric care by 30%. Upgrade your healthcare organization’s systems and services to the next level with AIT’s capabilities to overcome data silos, streamline patient management, and accelerate digital adoption.

Key Opportunities for Low-Code in Healthcare Systems 

1. Interoperability & Scalability: Low-code development in healthcare enables smooth integration with existing healthcare databases and systems. For instance, seamless integration of low-code-no-code tools with EHR solutions facilitates a comprehensive view of patient information. Moreover, low-code platforms come with mechanisms like automatic scaling and load balancing.
    
2. Reducing IT Dependency: Low-code-no-code solutions equip citizens and healthcare professionals to participate in the production & development of apps to introduce customized features in solutions. This helps in curtailing the dependency on IT staff and lowers the cost for hiring and maintaining a dedicated development team.
    
3. Fulfilling Customer Expectations: As citizens and healthcare staff become more and more tech-savvy, low-code platforms are encouraging user engagement, owing to seamless integration of multiple services throughout multiple channels. Additionally, a consistent and personalized experience through customized apps is projected to drive innovations for low-code system in healthcare.
    
4. Mobile Responsiveness: Since smartphones and tablets are becoming increasingly commonplace in healthcare organizations, software teams are developing low-code-no-code tools that manage health-related tasks. Developers are making sure that apps adjust seamlessly to different screen sizes, without the need for complex coding.
    
5. Automated Security Checks: Low-code solutions are enabling the security of patient data and other sensitive information. These checks ensure only authorized entities and individuals access confidential data. For example, user authentication protocols, access control features, and real-time monitoring of activity patterns are being integrated into no-code platforms.

Best Practices for Implementing Low Code in Healthcare

After assessing your healthcare organization’s specific needs and integration challenges, you can identify focus areas where low-code platforms can add value and mitigate critical pain points. Let’s take a look at some of the best practices for low-code application development in healthcare.

1. Begin with Small and Priority Use Cases: To gradually and successfully implement low-code in healthcare, organizations should focus on small and high-value use cases before attempting enterprise-wide rollouts. This approach helps organizations to test the platform’s capabilities and gain stakeholder confidence while delivering meaningful outcomes.
    
2. Involve Clinicians and Citizen Developers Early: A key success factor for LCNC initiatives at healthcare institutions is engaging clinicians and citizen developers early on to accelerate innovation while rapidly prototyping and customizing workflows. Early collaboration facilitates better enterprise-wide tech adoption, minimizes rework, and ensures applications are intuitive, efficient, and impactful.
    
3. Ensure Data Security and Compliance: Prioritizing security and compliance for low code use cases in healthcare is important in order to protect patient data and comply with regulations like HIPAA and GDPR.
    
4. Choose the Right Platform and Service Partner: Successful low-code adoption lies in choosing robust platforms that are scalable, secure, and integrate with existing legacy systems, EHRs, and third-party apps. 

Future of Low Code in Healthcare

The future of low-code in healthcare includes:

1. Chronic Disease Management: Healthcare providers are using low-code solutions to build telehealth apps, targeted towards patients with chronic diseases such as hypertension and diabetes. These apps help patients to communicate with their doctors, track their health metrics, and schedule appointments.
    
2. Clinical Decision Support App: The low-code system in healthcare is transforming with apps that help physicians and nurses to make informed decisions about patient diagnosis. Real-time access to relevant medical protocols and guidelines is empowering clinical decision support.
    
3. AI and Low-Code Integration: Companies and healthcare organizations are actively using AI and low-code-no-code for use cases like documentation and sentiment analysis. For instance, blockchain technology could enable the development of decentralized applications and smart contracts.
    
4. Mental Health Services: Low-code telehealth apps have the potential to grow prominent in remote areas for mental health clinics to connect with therapists via video conferencing and personalized treatment plans. Such initiatives are improving the patients’ quality of life and improving access to mental health services, while reducing the stigma associated with mental health issues.

Conclusion 

Low-code in healthcare is reshaping how care providers view digital transformation to enable unified data management, minimize overall costs, and facilitate patient-centric healthcare solutions. From telehealth and insurance claims to supply chain management and chronic disease monitoring, low-code examples in healthcare are driving efficiency, automation, and better patient outcomes.