DEV Community: West Agile Labs

IoT in Healthcare: Challenges, Benefits With Examples

West Agile Labs — Wed, 01 Feb 2023 11:23:24 +0000

According to Brandessence research, IoT in healthcare will exceed $10 billion by 2024. In addition to these technologies, other important factors impact this growth forecast. With the advent of ultra-fast 5G wireless, AI+, and Big Data, the IoT is slowly gaining traction and evolving. The Healthcare industry becomes more connected nowadays. IoT is a powerful technology creating a revolution. IoT and 5G wireless in healthcare could revolutionize remote monitoring and treatment. The IoT will benefit patients’ health and healthcare workers’ productivity.

What is the Role of IoT in Healthcare?

First, let’s see how IoT in general works since this will help us understand the IoT in Healthcare. Devices with sensors that can interact with the physical world via the Internet. Health practitioners can input patient data and gather data from IoT devices. An effective Internet of Things Healthcare example is continuous glucose monitoring.

Each of these devices is capable of communicating with the others. Sometimes, these actions can even save lives or provide timely help. If an older person falls down, an IoT healthcare device can call a healthcare facility. A healthcare IoT device would collect passive data and send it to the cloud for doctors to review. Analyze the patient’s general health status, and determine if emergency assistance is needed.

IoT in Healthcare: Challenges and Opportunities

IoT holds enormous potential for revolutionizing healthcare. It’s also important to know some pitfalls connected to IoT healthcare devices.

1. Data Security
IoT in healthcare faces a major security problem. The medical industry values data privacy because medical histories are confidential. Malicious actors and sensitive information exposed may access the company’s software. In contrast, a skilled medical software developer can effectively protect your future IoT-enabled app from any malicious actions.

IoT in healthcare must focus on data security to avoid such issues. Additional costs are certainly involved with such a necessity. The GDPR and the CCPA protect patient data on IoT-connected healthcare applications. Complying with the regulatory requirements will not only prevent sensitive data. Furthermore, it will help you avoid paying heavy fines.

2. Integration of Protocols
Several different IoT medical devices are connected through IoMT. The healthcare industry relies on many devices with different protocols. Thus, it creates a flexible ecosystem. In terms of communication protocols and standards, there is no single solution. Consequently, IoT integration in the healthcare industry is slow and limited.

HIPAA and HITECH compliance is crucial when creating medical software. Numerous rules and regulations are associated with processing patients’ personal information. An IoT company with in-depth expertise can facilitate such compliance and assist you.

3. Data Overload
IoT medical devices collect and process a lot of information. This can lead to a lack of accuracy and data overload for doctors. Internet of Things healthcare applications can generate a great deal of information. It helps in making treatment decisions difficult.

To read the detailed blog on the advantages and application of IOT, read here:

Top List of UX Research Methods and Uses to Choose the Best

West Agile Labs — Mon, 23 Jan 2023 07:56:47 +0000

User experience (UX) involves developing products that are useful, easy and enjoyable to use. A product’s entire experience is about enhancing people’s interactions with it. The company makes sure that its customers are delighted. UX designers achieve this goal by employing various UX research methods. UX research is a critical component of UX design yet is often misunderstood. User research and testing are often treated as afterthoughts or as an unaffordable luxury. In the real world, everything designers create in their safe, comfortable offices must endure and prosper. Thousands of people will interact with creations in an uncontrollable manner. UX research helps ground ideas in reality and improve their chances of success. Many people think there isn’t enough money, time, and expertise to solve problems.

Understanding why users behave in a certain way is essential to conducting effective UX research. Product teams and user experience designers should conduct regular user research. It is better to dive deeper if they have the time, resources, and budget.

What Are UX Research Methods?

A UX research method generates information about users’ behavior, motivations, and needs. The user experience can improve by utilizing various user research methods. The process involves user interviews, surveys, focus groups, and card sorting.

Benefits of UX Research Methods

Ultimately, user experience is about one thing. We aim to design products that enhance user interaction and make an impression. When the product meets users’ needs, they are happy and satisfied. The benefits of user research are numerous:

Develops human-centered products based on the needs and goals of your users
Analyzes the behaviors and usage patterns of users;
When you approach development and design correctly, you can avoid unnecessary costs;
Defines the end goal of the whole process;
Encourages team collaboration;
Replaces assumptions with data to address specific user issues;
Designing with usability in mind is possible to drive a better return on investment.

How Do You Select The Right UX Research Methods?

Selecting the right research approach isn’t always easy. Each user experience method has its benefits based on the project at hand. In defining your ux research method, you will need to take a few factors into account. The following are some of them:

Development type (app, website, software, etc.)
Client type
Phases of a project
Environment
Planned timeline
Resources

Check out the entire blog:

Functional Vs Non-Functional Requirements : Why Are Both Important?

West Agile Labs — Fri, 20 Jan 2023 06:42:14 +0000

Abiding by the requirements is always necessary to make a product successful. You might have some confusion when it comes to non-functional and functional requirements. Many questions come up during this discussion. Such as in software engineering, how can you distinguish functional from non-functional requirements? What is the significance of this distinction? Besides functional requirements, why are non-functional requirements significant? This article aims at answering all these questions for you.

Functional Requirements: What Are They?

In simple terms, functional requirements are the specifications of product features or functions. It is what defines how the software must be able to respond to inputs and what it must do. In other words, Functional requirements describe the goals of the software. Failing to meet the requirements will make your software not work. To understand this better thing about the last time you signed up on any website. Did you receive an email confirmation after you registered? So this functional requirement is added and written down in the development stage. The website must send an email notification to verify your registration.

Business analysts craft the requirements that are present in the document.. You can figure out the needs of the clients. Afterward, you can work it into the specifications that work with software.

These functional requirements can include the following:

administrative functions
business requirements
administrative functions
reporting requirements
certification requirements
authentication

What are Non-Functional Requirements?

To understand the main difference between the two, let us divide it into two actions. A non-functional requirement specifies how these functions need to take place. On the other hand, functional requirements define the behavior of the system. Let us take the example of email verification. A functional requirement is that you receive an email notification. The method of sending the email notification is a non-functional requirement.

*Non-functional requirements may include: *

Performance
Reliability
Usability

The main difference between the two requirements is that functional requirements are essential for system working. Thus, the system will still function even without meeting the non-functional requirement. The system won’t work if it doesn’t meet the functional requirements.

You cannot undervalue the importance of non-functional requirements, which is a fact. Functional requirements primarily focus on the client’s needs. The non-functional requirements are more focused on the user. For example, if the client needs website loading, which is a functional requirement. If it takes more than 30 secs to load, then it fails the purpose of the user.

Difference between Functional Vs. Non-Functional Requirements: Why Are They Important?

Many of them wonder if non-functional requirements and functional requirements are vital. All right, then do we have to distinguish between the both of them? No, to a certain extent. Development teams do not differentiate between these two things in practice. Instead, they execute the product’s features to the best of their ability.

Despite this, it is crucial to differentiate between functional and non-functional approaches. Whenever a client starts a project, he has specific requirements and goals in mind. Work scope should include both needs and wants of the client. And here is where it helps to understand the differences.

Based on the budget and cost review, the client can change or replace some requirements. In general, only non-functional requirements continue to change.

How Do Requirements Get Written?

Now that we understand what are functional requirements and non-functional requirements. Let’s move into details of how to write these requirements. Both these requirements don’t just come out of nowhere. They have been carefully documented and are present in a variety of forms. The documents may include user stories, specification documents, use cases. We shall look at each one in more detail:

SRS Document- Software Requirements Specification

In most cases, software requirements come in the form of a specification document. SRS defines product functions and the methods used to accomplish those functions. SRS is a list of all the features a product possesses.

The SRS document communicates the client’s expectations and needs to the development team. You must consider even the tiniest details of the product. The SRS plays a vital role in estimating the final costs and time required for the development.

SRS documents typically contain the following sections:

Introduction: describes the purpose, terms (document conventions), and provides references. Materials and literature that provide facts and grounding of specific technology theory.
Overall Description: Include product features (detailed description of each function), design. It also includes implementation constraints, code standards, data exchanges, and business logic restrictions.
The System Features: This defines a description of how each feature should work.
External Interface Requirement: It describes how the external environment interacts with the system.
Non-Functional Requirements: It includes software quality requirements, performance requirements, and security requirements.

User Stories

The purpose of user stories is to tell the story of a product as if it was the customer’s own. In a typical user story written as: as a (user role), I want to do (goal) for the reasons I stated (reason). ‍

A user story shifts focus with engaging dialogues rather than simply listing features. Story cards or sticky notes utilize brainstorming aids during planning developer meetings.

User Cases

In Agile development, use cases are like user stories. Users can interact with the system in many different ways by representing it in use cases. However, user stories are a bit more varied from use cases, despite sounding the same. Use cases are steps or flows that lead to a feature’s end purpose, which is entirely opposed to user stories.

Now, you can understand the technical nature of functional and non-functional requirements. But in reality, you can attain success in any product both the requirements are to co-exist as a single unit.