How to Develop a Hospital Management Software?

You as a Doctor, a general Physician, or the dean of your hospital already know the utmost significance of hospital management software for better clinical outcomes and patient satisfaction.

This is why it goes without saying it’s exceptionally important to learn how to effectively start and develop a Hospital management system that helps you streamline operations, enhance administration, and deliver real plausible benefits to hospitals.

Without healthcare software solutions, Physician specialists, and hospital executives experience a number of problems such as poor communication, lack of procedural inter-hospital collaboration, increased paperwork and dependencies, work inefficiency, and more. All potentially resulting in unnecessary costs or even danger to patients’ lives.

So why, still not, many healthcare administrators including CEOs and board of directors accountable for ensuring patient safety, patient satisfaction, and maintaining the financial health and stability of a healthcare organization lack mandatory Hospital management system software and other latest technologies?

Well, the time for excuses should now be over and this guide is here to help you understand why. We’ll cover how a Hospital administration system can help you drive better decisions, enhance clinical outcomes, administration, control, and improve profitability.

Let’s get started by first understanding this.

What is Hospital Management Software?

A Hospital Management Software is a powerful, flexible, and easy-to-use web-based system that integrates all the information related to patients, doctors, hospital staff, and all departments into one single software. The software efficiently manages the data of departments such as Patients, Doctors, Pharmacists, Radiologist, Pathologist, Accountant, Receptionist, etc.

A Good Hospital Management System Software-

• Provides A Connected Healthcare Ecosystem
• Streamlines Medical Records
• Enhances Administration And Control
• Optimizes Patient Care and Satisfaction
• Reduces Hospital Operating Costs
• Manages Patients Information Privacy

A smart Hospital Management System is custom-built to meet the specific requirements of mid and large-size hospitals. The modules and features are built as per individual hospitals’ departmental and administrative needs.

If you contact a Hospital Software Solution Provider to purchase the ready-made healthcare software you can get the entire web-based application customized and modified as per your needs and requirements. (An expert healthcare software development company will always be flexible to customize the software).

Next, if you’re looking to develop the software from scratch you should know what all features, modules, and technologies are used to build a powerful HMS solution. Let’s understand in detail.

Why is Hospital Management Software important, for healthcare organizations?

Hospital Management Software plays a vital role in healthcare organizations as it helps streamline operations improve administration and promote clinical outcomes and patient satisfaction. It effectively addresses challenges such, as communication gaps, inefficiencies and excessive paperwork ultimately leading to enhanced hospital productivity and financial stability.

How to Develop a Hospital Management Software?

A hospital management software comprises a spectrum of modules and interfaces that accounts for the effective functioning of hospital administration. Here we will discuss the most used and adopted healthcare modules that contribute to improved health care and medical services.

1. Features of Patient Module

The features involved in the patient interface are:

• Patient Registration (OPD/IPD)
  1. Outpatient Registration (OPD): Patients who only come for diagnosis, consultation, or other medical treatment but are not admitted to hospital.
  2. In-Patient Registration (IPD): Patients who are admitted into the hospital. In this module, the interfaces can be divided into patient personal information, guardian information, and Doctor’s information.
• Online Appointment Scheduling
• View upcoming appointment
• View medication prescriptions online
• View Doctor/Physician detail
• Invoice Details
• See Admin and Operation history
• Check their invoices/bills
• See a list of documents, notices, if any

2. Features of Doctor Module

The Doctor should be able to (but not limited to) perform the following functions:

• Doctors can create and manage their appointments
• Manage patients admissions
• Manage bed assigns
• Create prescriptions for their patients
• Manage reports of patients from OPD/IPD and OT
• Doctors can set their schedules of appointments
• See the latest notifications

3. Features of Pharmacist Module

A Pharmacist should be able to manage the following interfaces:

• Manage medicine categories
• Manage medicines
• Manage medicine bills
• View reports of medicine bills
• See the latest notice
• View reports of expired medicines
• Import medicine
• Purchase medicines
• Do Live consultation with patients
• Be notified with messages, reports, new medicines added, etc.

4. Features of Radiologist Module

A Radiologist should be able to manage the following interfaces:

• Manage radiology test & reports
• View radiology report
• Access their leaves and payrolls
• Access patient list
• Add charges for the test
• Do Live video consultations

5. Features of Pathologist Module

A Pathologist should be able to perform the following functions:

• Manage pathology test & reports
• Add pathology test
• View live video consultation
• Access their leaves and payrolls
• Post new messages inter department
• Upload content related to department
• Access patients list with patient’s details and medications
• Add charges against all the type of test

6. Features of Accountant Module

The functions of an accountant in a hospital information system include (but not limited to):

• Manage invoices created against any bills
• Manage Payments by viewing income list, expense list
• Access payrolls of all staff members
• Access Bills generated against income and expenses
• See notifications and alerts from staff, admin

7. Features of Receptionist Module

A Receptionist should be able to perform the following functions:

• Create and manage all appointments
• See all Patients appointment list and have the option to approve them
• Change Patients’ doctors as per availability
• Manage all mail services like sending messages to all departments or particular staff member
• Create noticeboards and broadcast them for all departments or a single staff member

8. Features of the Admin Module

An Admin should be able to manage the following functions:

• Manage all the departments and users
• Manage departments and roles
• See visual dashboard with total income, upcoming appointments, list of all departments, no. of members in each department
• Access payrolls of all staff members, department wise
• Set permissions for all departments as well as members

9. Features of Super Admin Module

A Super Admin should be able to manage the following functions:

• Manage admins and create roles for them
• Assign and manage various staffs roles and permission
• Approve and disapprove leaves
• Manage and approve attendance
• View income versus expenses
• View and manage appointments and schedules
• Setup department-wise action items and controls
• Have an overall view on the numbers of patients and staffs in the system
• View the logs of the staff members and should be able to access their information
• Access to all the reports including transaction report, patient, doctor, other staff and departments
• Send notices, events and announcement
• Manage site setting, CMS, and Calendars
• Manage all the modules in the hospital information system
• Backup and Restore

Cost to Develop a Hospital Management Software

As we have seen an online hospital management software consists of many modules that can be flexibly added or removed according to hospital-specific needs and each of these modules has their own set of features and functionalities which require separate coding. Therefore, the cost estimation of the HMS solution is difficult.

However, some of the factors that heavily contribute to the total cost are:

• User Interface Design
• Module Development
• No. of features and functionalities in each module
• Third-Party API Integrations
• App Complexity
• Testing and Maintenance

Additional Factor

• Location of software development partner
• Development team size
• Hour per development
• Project timeline

A Ballpark Figure9

The total cost to develop a hospital management software may range somewhere around $20,000 to $70,000.

Improvements in Hospital Productivity Means Automated Health System

Hospital and health system looking to improve the clinical and financial performance of their facilities should shift their entire administration to a robust, flexible, and easy-to-use hospital software system. That said, a good hospital software solution can help in increasing care quality, streamlining processes, and enhancing operational efficiency, ultimately improving the system performance and financial profitability.

Codiant’s custom-built Hospital Management System is designed and developed to meet the specific requirement of mid and large-size hospitals across the globe. Our HMS solution integrates all the required modules and features that are particularly built to fit into your requirements.