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Health and medical software is that designed for use within the healthcare and medical industries.

This may include standalone software used for therapeutic or diagnostic purposes, installed on a single computer, multiple computers, on a healthcare network, and it may also be cloud-based, purchased or acquired on a subscription plan, such as a software-as-a-service (SaaS) software model.

It may also refer to the software that drives a medical device or determines how it is used, as well as that which is embedded in a medical device, acts as an accessory to a medical device, or that which is used in the design, production, testing, or quality control management of a medical device.

Although medical software has been in use since the 1960s, it wasn't until the late 1970s and early 1980s that the use of medical software as a data and operations management tool became commonplace within the industry, including physician's offices.

By the 1990s, medical software had become prominent in medical devices, particularly in cardiology, nuclear medicine, and medical robotics.

In the past decade or longer, healthcare software has become widely used by healthcare providers in all of the medical fields, including the organization, management, and monitoring of patient data, with mandatory uses at the state and federal levels.

Medical practice management software (MPMS) helps manage the day-to-day operations of a medical practice, allowing providers to enter and track patient information, such as diagnoses and procedures, medications, and appointments, as well as processing insurance and payment information. In most practices, MPMS is integrated with other modules.

Electronic health record software (EHR) is another type of healthcare software that stores information about patients. Information such as patient demographics, medical history, laboratory results, and allergies are shared with other medical professionals treating the patient. EHR resources generally allow physicians to send prescriptions to pharmacies electronically, replacing medical scripts. Financial reporting may also be included.

When not included in another module, E-Prescribing software allows physicians to send prescriptions directly to a patient's pharmacy electronically, avoiding the use of handwritten prescriptions that are sometimes misread.

Hospital management software (HMS) stores data on patients, doctors, and medical staff, as well as hospital billing. An HMS system manages all areas of a hospital, improving communication and efficiency.

Healthcare customer relationship management (CRM) software helps to maintain patient relationships, and may be used to provide patients with lab reports, scheduling, and other relevant information, sometimes integrated with the healthcare facility's online patient portal.

With the increased use of smartphones and mobile devices in the past decade, mobile applications have been developed to regulate installed pacemakers, analyze images for cancerous lesions, and to assist in the function of glucometers, stethoscopes, spirometers, BMI calculators, heart rate monitors, and for many other purposes. These are currently regulated as software-as-a-medical-device (SaMD).

These and any other types of software used within the health or medical industries are appropriate for this category.

 

 

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