Where to Find & Hire the Best Healthcare Software Developers
Nowadays, investments in healthcare digitalization became more and more reasonable decisions. Medical institutions using up-to-date technologies to advance patient care and improve their revenues. Partly, the reason is in the technical progress, but also in recent events connected to the COVID-19 pandemic. But where do these businesses should look for reliable healthcare software developers? In this article, we gathered information so you can make data-driven decisions.
Trends of healthcare software and information technology market
The Healthcare software and IT market are growing with incredible speed. Predicted, the compound annual growth rate (CAGR) will exceed 15% during the next few years. The global healthcare IT market will reach USD 530 billion in 2026.
Patient care improvement through virtual care, reducing expenses, and upgrading the administration process are driving the interest in new technologies. As a result, healthcare companies are actively investing in management software.
Virtual care is revolutionizing medical management. For example, EHR (Electronic Healthcare Records) and EMR (Electronic Medical Records) systems are gaining more popularity. These tools revolutionize medical management. They allow keeping all sensitive data structured, secured, and gathered in one place. Basically, clinical management takes 11,8% of the healthcare IT market.
Likewise, the analytical sector of the market is showing steep growth. Healthcare organizations are improving operational processes using the newest technologies. Among trends – predictive analyses.
AI-based solutions can forecast the number of clinic’s patients, medical tools availability, and more. There are also ground-breaking AI tools that help doctors in diagnostics based on historical data and Computer Vision.
Also, AI and Computer Vision help to translate handwritten docs into electronic health records. The technology became more popular, and Abto Software teams have already succeeded in this area.
The Cloud computing market is among trends as well. Higher demand for digital healthcare tools leads to the need for cloud solutions. The sector will grow with a 13.4% CAGR to reach USD 79.3 billion by 2027.
On the one hand, all these technologies lead to further innovations and advances in healthcare. On the other hand, they come with new challenges. Medical institutions have to face problems with cybersecurity, data storage, lack of tech talents, and more. And that is one more reason to look for reliable healthcare software developers.
COVID-19 impact on healthcare software development
COVID-19 and global lockdown brought a lot of changes in many aspects of our lives. We had to adapt to new circumstances and a new weird world. Changes were especially difficult for organizations that needed to expand their online presence or totally change business processes.
And the healthcare industry found itself in the middle of those changes. McKinsey&Company, a worldwide known consulting and research organization, spent the last year trying to understand new patient behavior. Today, people want their healthcare to be more transparent, personalized, and available 24/7 from any location. The patients are ready to approach virtual care.
In conditions of lockdown, telehealth systems turned out to be almost irreplaceable. They are giving quick access to medical services and helping to keep social distancing at the same time. Only in the US, the number of telehealth visits increased 50–175 times in different locations. According to McKinsey, the potential market size of virtual care is up to USD 250 billion.
Telemedicine software development: Find out How to Build a Telemedicine System
Trends in healthcare investments
The same research said that investing in healthcare technology has doubled during the last two years. The total sum of healthcare investments reached USD 14.7 billion in the first half of 2021.
The top 60 virtual health players are leading the market. Together, they invested USD 5.5 billion in healthcare software development during 2020. Of course, these impressive investments lead to innovations and advancing current solutions. The process will make smaller game players increase their tech investments to adapt to changes and stay competitive.
So, what are the main priorities of healthcare investments? 77% of healthcare institutions are already investing in synchronous telemedicine apps. 93% of them are planning to adopt virtual care.
The demand for treatment optimization solutions and e-triage tools is growing even faster. E-triage systems are AI-based predictive software for analyzing patient outcomes and helping doctors in making decisions, which indicates the need to utilize virtual care.
Why outsource custom healthcare software development
While technologies are modifying, the reasons to outsource are changing as well. Reducing operational costs is still among those reasons. Although, the main focus is on increasing efficiency and expanding available expertise.
Innovative technologies are appearing faster than students can learn. That is why high-quality professionals became the main reason to outsource software development.
The problem with tech talents shortage will escalate due to the COVID-19 outcome. Let’s analyze the United States as an example. Based on the data from the American Council on Education, the number of international students enrollments decreased by 43% in 2020. As a result, the country will lose nearly 12 thousand young professionals in years to come.
The US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) predicted over 30 thousand new developers jobs every year during the next decade. Universities won’t be able to cover such high demand, and developers won’t gain the required professional level in time.
Best countries for outsourcing software development
So, how do you choose a country for outsourcing software development? How do you find out what level of technical knowledge people have in different locations? Thankfully, we have detailed data to make the right decisions.
Every year, Coursera, a known online courses provider, creates a Global Skills Index report. There we can evaluate the level of technical skills all over the globe. According to the report, European countries have cutting-edge technical skills and became a leader in 2020. Switzerland, Switzerland, Ukraine, Finland, Netherlands, and others are among the countries with a level of technical knowledge of over 90%.
But would this information be enough for choosing a country for outsourcing software development? We think there are a few main criteria for this decision-making.
Criteria for choosing the right outsourcing destination:
1. Industry specialization
Check if the country you are interested in has enough professionals in your focus area. Specific industries like healthcare require narrow expertise in project requirements and laws details.
2. Average rates
You can find out the average hour or project rates for a specific region, country, or company. Be careful with the lowest rates. Saving money on professionals can have a bad influence on your project outcome.
3. UN education rankings
The higher the education rank – the more professional developers in the country. Besides, a good level of education meant not only the availability of developers. It means there are also researchers who are working on innovations and often have fresh ideas that no one else has.
4. Number of technical professionals
The number of technical professionals is connected to the level of education. However, this is also an indicator of the number of software development companies that are opening new jobs regularly.
5. IT ecosystem
This criterion sums up the previous two and shows the potential of the IT industry in a particular location. A full-growth IT ecosystem means established connections between IT companies, educational, and government institutions. It shows a high interest in technologies inside society and predicts industry growth.
6. Culture
It is important to be on the same page with your development team. However, to speak the same language is not always enough. Do you have the same problem-solving mentality? Are you comfortable with their communication style and working habits? These are the questions to consider.
7. Time zone
Of course, you can freely communicate with people from anywhere thanks to modern technologies. It is much more convenient when you have at least a few same working hours as your tech vendor. Or make sure your healthcare software development company is ready to adjust their working graphic to your needs.
Software outsource market insights
And now we can choose an exact country for outsourcing software development. Let’s start with industry specializations by region prepared by the SourceSeek report. It shows that Eastern Europe and South-East Asia have more diversity in the industries they work in. These regions have experience in healthcare, automotive, finance, security, and more.
According to the same report, prices in Eastern Europe have been growing during the last few years. That can be an indicator of good technical knowledge and advancing demand as well.
If we look closer to the region, we will see countries with rates for every demand. Ukraine keeps the middle position while still offering high-quality services.
Also, Eastern Europe is ahead of other regions in the UN Education ranking.
The level of education influences the number of professional software developers. According to a BeetRoot report, the UK provides around 60 thousand tech graduates every year, Germany – 90, France – 110. The leader of the region is Ukraine with 130 thousand new professionals annually.
Eastern Europe is showing the fastest progress of IT ecosystem development as well. This result is gained due to a higher number of tech startups and a high level of investments. Venture activities are growing steadily as well as IT communities.
Inside the region, Ukraine is showing the steepest ecosystems development.
Counting the cultural indicators, researchers took into account English knowledge, grit and problem solving, communication style, and work habits.
Ukraine, Poland, and Belarus are leaders here, but thanks to different cultural strengths. Researches named reliability and assertiveness of Belarus developers, deep cultural connection with the US of Polish experts. Ukrainian developers are known as flexible and reliable professionals, the best at communication-intensive workflows.
To sum up different criteria, we can see the software outsourcing leaders.
Interesting that Ukraine appears as a leader in several more resources. For example, The Good Country Index measures the global influence of the 149 countries. Based on data from the United Nations and other international agencies, countries get points for the impact in science and technology, culture, peace, world order, planet and climate, prosperity and equality, health and well-being.
According to the resource, Ukraine takes first place in the Science & Technology category.
Let’s take a closer look at the country that we have already mentioned several times.
Ukrainian software outsourcing market insights
Ukrainian IT services market showing a faster speed of growth than the global industry. In 2020, it increased by 20.44% and reached USD 5 billion. Even with a pause caused by COVID-19, the industry development speed has already returned to the pre-pandemic level.
Ukraine is located in the middle of Europe, which makes its time zone perfect for neighbors. With a 7-hours time difference, it is convenient even for the East Coast of the United States. Even so, big-time differences do not scare off American businesses. The US still has around 60% of the Ukrainian software outsourcing market.
Today, there are over 200,000 tech specialists in the country and between 3,000 and 5,000 IT companies according to different sources. The main industry focus is eCommerce with 17,4% of the market. Still, healthcare occupies 11% of the Ukrainian IT industry and is growing in popularity.
As for technologies, JavaScript, Java, and C# remain the most popular programming languages in the country. The most common frameworks are React.js, Node.js, Angular.js, and .NET. Still, there are enough professionals to cover all the modern technologies.
Conclusions
Outsourcing is an important approach to finding tech specialists with the right skills and knowledge. It gives a business number of advantages such as increasing efficiency, expanding available expertise, and, of course, optimizing budgets.
Outsourcing became especially important for healthcare software development because of the narrow area of knowledge. While the management software, AI and Computer Vision analytical tools, cloud computing are driving healthcare investments, finding reliable tech experts in the medical area became more and more complicated.
The newest professional researches simplify choosing the best countries for outsourcing software development. According to the analytics, Eastern Europe is the more perspective region for tech outsourcing. Ukraine, Poland, and Estonia are gaining more popularity with Ukraine as a leader among them.
Choose your software development company wisely and stay healthy!
Abto Software’s healthcare expertise:
- AI based pose detection for remote physical rehabilitation – markerless analysis to enhance MSK rehab
- Telemedicine platform for US healthcare provider with integrated medical insurance
- AI supported jump recognition and analysis – sensorless human activity recognition
- CV based self-diagnosis telemedicine app – camera-based human pose assessment
