Ever wish there was a way to avoid downtime that costs mobile healthcare organizations millions of dollars every year?
Well, there is!
Downtime in a hospital hurts. But downtime in a mobile healthcare provider wreaks havoc.
Consider this: A mobile healthcare provider deployed during a natural disaster or emergency is often bearing full responsibility for providing care to patients. When their operations go down, there is no “Plan B.”
To ensure mobile providers can deliver continuous patient care, we need to eliminate downtime with solid software solutions.
Fortunately, several different software solutions exist that help mobile healthcare providers reduce downtime significantly. Software strategies like offline-first platforms and predictive maintenance integration can ensure your mobile healthcare operations stay online no matter what disaster they’re facing.
In this article, you’ll discover:
- Why downtime can be so dangerous for mobile healthcare providers
- Common software problems that affect disaster response vehicles
- 5 strategies for reducing downtime with software
- How to create a tech stack that will stand up to anything
Let’s get started.
Why Downtime Is So Dangerous for Mobile Healthcare Providers
As mentioned earlier, downtime in hospital settings is never ideal. But downtime in a mobile healthcare environment can be devastating for many reasons.
Imagine this situation:
It’s been three days since a hurricane ravaged your town. Your local hospital is flooded and forced to turn away patients. You load into your disaster response vehicle with your tech stack ready to rumble, and head to the nearest shelter to provide care.
But as soon as you arrive, you experience…downtime.
All of a sudden your records system goes down, your lights flicker, and your laptops shut off.
You’re scrambling but there’s no time to reboot everything and restart. Patients needing care are lined up around the block waiting for you to open up!
It’s a scenario no one wants to imagine but it happens all too often when software systems aren’t prepared for unpredictable network connectivity and disasters. This is exactly why Mobile Command Centers deployed as disaster response vehicles need resilient software that won’t buckle under pressure.
Not only does downtime impact patient care, it can cost organizations huge amounts of money. On average hospital outages cost about $7,500 per minute.
According to recent reports, ransomware attacks are causing healthcare organizations an average of 17 days of downtime per breach.
The moral of the story? Downtime in mobile healthcare settings can cost lives and cause organizations to lose millions.
And that’s why preventing downtime is of the utmost importance.
The Biggest Software Threats to Disaster Response Vehicles
Okay, so we know downtime is bad. But what causes downtime in mobile healthcare environments?
Since mobile healthcare providers work in untraditional settings, they run into a lot of software obstacles that stationary hospitals don’t.
Below are a few common ones.
- Spotty or nonexistent connectivity: Whether you’re in a rural area with poor connectivity or a disaster zone where infrastructure is damaged, if your software goes offline you’re sunk.
- Legacy systems: Older software is more likely to experience bugs and glitches that can cause operations to come to a halt.
- Cyber attacks: As mentioned above, ransomware poses a huge problem for healthcare providers. These attacks can take an entire IT system offline until the issue is resolved.
- Weather and environmental conditions: Mobile healthcare providers can face serious hardware and software issues as a result of extreme temperatures, moisture, and more. If hardware breaks down, software goes with it.
- Data syncing issues: Software needs to communicate with each other in order to function. When systems aren’t designed to “talk” to one another properly, errors and downtime occur.
There are tons of different causes of downtime. And most tend to relate to software not functioning properly.
Luckily, there are solid solutions for each one of these problems. Let’s check them out.
5 Software Strategies That Reduce Downtime
Below are five proven strategies that every mobile healthcare provider can implement right now to reduce downtime.
Build An Offline-First Software Stack
The number one software strategy for mobile healthcare is simple: build an offline-first software stack.
Here’s the deal: When you’re working in an environment with unpredictable network connectivity, you can’t use cloud-only software that goes down whenever the internet goes out.
All of your software needs to function on the device first (“offline”) and then sync data to the cloud when connectivity is available.
This is the biggest “aha!” moment that mobile healthcare providers come to when they’re researching how to avoid downtime.
Automate System Checks and Software Monitoring
Software systems and devices should be automatically monitoring themselves. If something goes wrong, software should alert IT personnel to the problem.
Things like memory usage, disk space, and application response times should be monitored 24/7/365 so IT teams are notified of potential problems before they lead to downtime.
Harden Cybersecurity Measures
Again, cybersecurity attacks are a leading cause of downtime in all industries. And healthcare providers are huge targets.
Every device that connects to your system should have endpoint protection. Data should be encrypted, and systems should require multi-factor authentication upon login.
It’s also super important to train staff on how to spot phishing emails and other scams. Many cyber attacks are preventable if staff know what they’re looking for.
Invest in Modular Software Platforms
Think of modular software as isolation wards for your tech stack.
If one system goes down, everything else should continue functioning. Software modules should be able to “plug in” and “unplug” from the greater system without taking everything down with it.
Having a modular tech stack is incredibly important for mobile healthcare providers. When something goes wrong, you want to be able to pinpoint the problem and fix it – not have your whole system come crashing down.
Integrate Predictive Maintenance Software
Did you know that you can predict when systems are likely to fail?
Using predictive maintenance software, mobile healthcare providers can stay one step ahead of downtime. Predictive maintenance software analyzes your current systems to determine when hardware and software will stop functioning at optimal levels.
By knowing in advance when your systems will begin to fail, you can swap out parts and software before they cause any real damage.
How To Create A Software Stack That Works For You
Creating a powerful software strategy for your mobile healthcare service doesn’t need to be difficult. Implementing the four strategies above is a great start.
But here are a few tips to keep in mind when building your mobile healthcare software stack from the ground up.
Focus on using software that will:
- Operate when there’s no internet connection (Hint hint: Offline-first)
- Protect your hardware and software from cybersecurity attacks (Encrypt everything!)
- Continue running even if one module goes down (Modular tech stack!)
- Automate IT alerts to notify you of potential issues before they become larger problems. (Automate everything!!!)
- Update and patch itself regularly
There’s no silver bullet for preventing downtime.
However, when all these strategies work in tandem, you’ll have created a software fortress that will hold up under any situation.
Wrapping It Up
Downtime in mobile healthcare settings is never ideal, but it can be completely devastating.
That’s why every single mobile healthcare provider should be implementing strategies to reduce downtime as much as possible.
Building strong software foundations with offline-first architecture, automated system checks, cybersecurity measures, modular design, and predictive maintenance will keep your systems running long after others have thrown in the towel.
Don’t wait until your systems go down to think about how to prevent it. Build a mobile technology solution that’s proactive vs. reactive.
