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  • Role Of Healthcare Mobility In Improving Patient’s Care

    COVID-19 has made us understand the role of healthcare software solutions and the need to invest in them. Healthcare mobility turns out to be a blessing in the COVID-19 situation, with the healthcare industry continuously facing the challenge of catering top-notch quality healthcare to the patients by following all the compulsory privacy safeguards as well.

    A patient’s medical records must be transferred within the time limit to avoid delays in the patient’s health and quality of care. Thus, mobility in healthcare is associated with both the healthcare institutes and patients. It facilitates a secure and effective change of clinical data in the healthcare centers. The data exchange strictly complies with all the required industry regulations like HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act). Before moving further, let’s check out the advantages of having mobility in healthcare.

    The advantages of mobility in healthcare:

    • Streamlines the workflow and helps with clinical collaboration.
    • With timely access to the data, it serves as great help to the doctors to take timely decisions.
    • Medical devices are now easily accessible to patients.
    • Medical record retrieval of a patient has become easy with the introduction of devices like tablets, smartphones, and PDAs.
    • With enhanced security integration and coverage, healthcare mobility has been completely transformed in terms of delivery.

    As the mobility in healthcare is flourishing rapidly, let’s find out who all will be getting the most advantage out of it. Not only this, but we will also highlight the products built for healthcare mobility.

    Who all will be benefited the most from healthcare mobility?

    • Patients
    • Consultants
    • Physicians
    • Doctors
    • Practitioners
    • Insurance companies
    • Laboratories

    What products are built to enhance healthcare mobility?

    • Mobile Applications (for Android, iOS, and Windows)
    • Tablets and PC web-apps
    • Scanners (RFID and Barcode)
    • Enterprise Mobility Platform
    • Hospital Systems

    Now, moving on to the next section where we will discuss some of the technologies that can be leveraged to enhance a patient’s care.

    Leverage the following technologies to improve a patient’s health

    1. Beacons: It is a robust and smart technology that can be used as a helper for all medical experts. With beacons, the physicians can easily analyze the patient’s medical history. Further, allowing the physicians to understand what type of medical cure is needed if the patient is allergic to anything, the patient’s blood type, and other pieces of information that are crucial for the patient’s treatment.
    2. Wearables: Wearable devices have turned out to be very helpful for the healthcare industry. By leveraging the wearables, the healthcare industry can track patient’s health status, manage and monitor weight control, collect heart and pulse rate, etc. The wearables are of two different types: healthcare professionals and patient care. Healthcare experts can use a wearable to track and gather information, like video recorders and gyroscopes. Whereas, patients can use it to track their own pulse rate, activities, blood pressure, etc.
    3. Telehealth and Telemedicine: Telemedicine is a subject of telehealth. Telemedicine offers the users with clinical support and telehealth delivers the non-clinical extension. With telemedicine, a connection with patients could be established via call/text, video calls, through computers, tablets, or mobile phones. In brief, telehealth is a combination of health as well as technology that aims to enhance the patient’s care.
    4. Mobile Carts: It is a combination of mobile computing carts along with electronic health records to offer better care to patients. These carts are connected internally with the patient’s and medical team’s mobile devices. This helps in establishing a more coordinated platform to discuss.
    5. Internet of Things (IoT): One of the important purposes is to streamline as well as automate the process to deliver agile results. Leveraging IoT in healthcare seems to be highly beneficial for the vertical, as it would take the industry a step closer to the modern as well as a technologically advanced world. IoT will help the care providers to access the patient’s clinical data. Implementing IoT at hospitals could assist in keeping a track of the stocks and understanding the medical equipment-related requirement in the hospitals.

    With the effectiveness of mobile technologies, the healthcare industry has started focusing more on it and investing in it too. Mobility in healthcare streamlines the process and taking a complex decision also does not consume more time now.

  • DevOps Trends to watch out for in 2021

    Embarking on the path of accelerating digital transformation has become the need of the hour and DevOps plays a crucial role in this journey for a business to succeed. To cater to the changing business landscape and technology needs, DevOps is evolving rapidly. With DevOps entering its second decade it’s no more about just dev and ops, engineering teams are expanding their focus beyond the product delivery. The idea is to emphasize more on the value rather than solely focusing on the new features and products.

    As mentioned, DevOps is constantly evolving and collaborating with multiple technologies to create a more robust product. You should always be aware of the trends and reap the maximum benefits out of them. Let’s find out the top DevOps trends that will rule the year 2021.

    Top DevOps Trends:

    • The balance between agility and speed: 10 years back the software release cycles used to take four to 6 months of time. But today the software release time duration has reduced exponentially. Be it security, compliance, authentication, vulnerability management, and authorization, they all have to also pick up the speed to ensure the delivery of secure code. Adopting a shared model of security that helps the application owners to quickly detect and fix the vulnerabilities in the right innovative approach. This model requires a perfect balance between agility and security to avoid any blockages in the software release cycles is necessary.

     

    • Microservices Architecture Popularization: Leveraging a microservices architecture approach is cost-effective and easy to maintain. Not only this, but it is also flexible, scalable, and you can easily deploy it independently. Microservices architecture’s ability to deploy independently is quite beneficial for DevOps as it easily connects the parts of units. This further helps DevOps to focus properly on the individual units for the quick delivery of complex applications. When these two are combined together, it saves cost, resources, and time as well

     

    • AI and ML in DevOps: Having a big amount of data has become quite common for organizations today. The volume of data generated is quite difficult to handle in a traditional method. AI and ML when implemented with DevOps allows organizations to streamline their data. Once the data is streamlined, you can easily use this data to analyze be it of any size. This will also speed up the workflow transforming completely the way your teams are developing, delivering, and deploying. It will increase agility and optimize the DevOps environment quickly. You will see an improvement in the automation and collaboration between teams become better

     

    • Embracing the APM Software: Application performance monitoring (APM) assists with monitoring deployments and will give you useful insights into the performances well. One of the important aspects of the DevOps lifecycle is being able to get rapid feedback, especially when you are deploying. By leveraging APM tools you can easily check the user interactions, tracing applications, and availing the analytics with the help of your AI-based algorithms. The new APM platforms will assist you in monitoring the integrated infrastructure along with the built-in analysis capability

     

    • Low-Code and DevOps Automation: Workflows in DevOps like alert in production, prioritization, incident creation, applying the fix, and resolving tickets follow a standard approach. This tells that there are many cases that can be easily managed automatically. The whole point is that automating these workflows is important to make DevOps more responsive and effective at the same time. Having a continuously evolving low-code automation interface that you can customize also will be highly effective for your DevOps team.

     

    Adopting DevOps in the past isn’t enough to evolve in the constantly changing market. With things evolving around you, DevOps isn’t something that won’t evolve in fact it is in constant evolution. The trends mentioned above are something that will help you understand the DevOps evolution more clearly. It is important to constantly check such trends for your DevOps process to succeed. Knowing more in detail about these trends will help you achieve a better DevOps implementation. Thus, leverage our DevOps services to stay updated in the market with all the trends by implementing them in your product depending on the requirements.

  • How EOV’s Business Analyst contributes to SDLC ?

    The current market is quite competitive and dynamic out there. And, looking at the current market the businesses shouldn’t stop themselves from trying out new tools and cutting-edge technologies that are easily accessible. Taking a smart and right decision rightly helps an organization in its growth process. The changing technology brings along a lot of bottlenecks, risks, and requires a certain amount of investment too. And, to keep up with all these different angles in a business, a business analyst (BA) plays a crucial role. A business analyst extensively explores and understands the various technologies to cater to the clients’ requirements.

    Before, getting into the details of the role of a business analyst and how our business analyst can add value to your business, let’s understand the business analysis first. 

    What is Business Analysis?

    Business analysis in layman’s terms is to understand the data in depth by leveraging certain techniques and combinations. Also, performing tasks to easily determine the business requirements and suggesting changes comes under business analysis. Pitching the solutions to ensure that the stakeholders can extract the required knowledge out of it is something that adds extra value to the business analysis process. These solutions differ from software related to organizational changes like upgrading the processes, introducing new technologies, and strategic planning engagement.

    Now, let’s check out the role of an EOV’s Business analyst in the software development lifecycle (SDLC).

    Role of EOV’s Business Analyst in SDLC:

    SDLC phase comprises 5 different stages that are planning, analysis, design, implementation, and maintenance. EOV’s business analyst makes sure to assist each stage of the program’s lifecycle. The business analyst must make the customer comfortable throughout the early as well as the continuous delivery of their software. Our business analysts are integral to our business as they quickly identify the business requirements and are capable of catering a solution as well. Find out below the role of our Business Analyst during an SDLC:

    Phase 1 – Inception Phase: Understanding the client and the customers are crucial whenever a project is at a starting phase. A business analyst looks after the complete objective of any project by following a customer-oriented approach. Our business analyst conducts meetings with your stakeholders to understand the process and technology. It helps our BA to draft a substantial and obtainable roadmap for the client to deliver the services. The inception phase is considered a crucial phase because the decisions taken should be able to produce positive results in the future to achieve goals.

    Phase 2 – Elaboration Phase: In this phase, our business analyst drafts a plan that requires a robust, efficient, and agile environment to be executed. At this phase, innovative solutions are incorporated to have a seamless continuous up-gradation of services. The BA creates comprehensive user stories containing the customer requirements and the value proposition made to the client. The role of our BA includes assisting the design process of a solution with the stakeholders, designers, and developers to make sure that everyone is on the same page.

    Phase 3 – Design Phase: Our business analyst tries to bridge the gap between the customer journey and design to avoid the missed opportunities in cross-selling. The BA offers implementation, design, and expertise to bring a client’s vision to life. In this phase, the BA is the one who produces customer-related UX, UI, technical statements, workflows, wireframes, and process definitions to cater to our client’s requirements. With our BA, your team will have a clear future vision and will make them familiar with new processes to own their product in the long run.

    Phase 4 – Implementation Phase: EOV’s business analyst takes care of certain things during the implementation phase like contributing to the production. Also, creating the practical specifications along with the content and structure. The BA works toward selecting different elements varying on the projects. Builds the content strategy, input requirements, and collection of input, explains the entire vision, governance issues as well as the final strategy structure. Assists in identifying the various opportunities to leverage the tools. Identifies the challenges that can occur in the current project and recommends various solutions to mitigate them.

    Phase 5 – Testing Phase: After the implementation phase, the testing phase comes in. BA plays a crucial role in any testing activity carried out because of their vast knowledge related to the requirements. Our BA’s responsibilities during the dedicated testing phase comprise resolving the testing team queries, validating the issues faced, assigning the issues to the concerned dev team, and collaborating with the dev team and business to reach a solution.

    Thus, it is quite clear that a BA makes your product simple and robust. EOV’s BA showcases multiple capabilities like soft and hard skills along with a wide range of experience in IT or business background. They showcase strong analytical thinking and have great problem-solving skills. Great facilitation skills and a detail-oriented outlook with exceptional organizational skills. Demonstrating extensive knowledge of the business structures and are familiar with the understanding of networks, databases, and the working of technologies.

    Final words- Why you should opt for Business Analyst?

    Opting for a BA will help your organization to have a regulated approach towards creating and looking after the change within your organization. The BA will instantly identify the vulnerabilities, define the requirements based on feedback and communication with the stakeholders, implement the solutions by organizing them, and will observe the results as well. They will bring a positive change to the organization and will assist in understanding the needs of an organization and would know how to meet the requirements. Thus, a business analyst is a valuable resource to an organization and to a business that assists at each step to make the best move based on a calculated and strategic scale.

    For more detailed information and understanding of our BA practice, also how we help client’s in capturing their ideas into an actionable plan, write us today at info@embarkingonvoyage.com

  • Empower the Digital Ecosystem with API to Reap Profits

    Today, if you look closely at APIs (Application Programming Interfaces), they are everywhere be it travel booking, Twitter bots, log-in functionality, weather snippets, Google maps, etc. In the past, API facilitated speedy application development and simplified complex integrations. But, in the present API has become very crucial to the digital transformation. In the 21st century, API has appeared to be one of the top-notch products that can empower your applications, services, and interrelated devices for your organization. When the businesses suddenly started operating remotely due to the COVID-19 pandemic, APIs played a significant role to help the businesses survive with their flexibility and robustness.

    The digital platforms are now completely aware of the inevitability of leveraging APIs in the future. Thus, the surge in the API economy empowers the organizations to go in for different business channels and market sections existing beyond the traditional four walls. Let’s focus on an in-depth understanding of the efficient digital workflow with APIs.

    Streamlined Digital Workflow with APIs:
    It has been observed that there were few bottlenecks with the traditional approach like manual interfaces leading to errors, software applications were mostly professional and multi-faceted that required the user to understand it thoroughly, it was tedious and unrepeatable. These challenges could be easily resolved by just automating the workflow and you can have a great end-to-end digital workflow. But, the question arises, how is it possible? It is possible with the help of APIs, especially with the advancement in Cloud computing, APIs value that it has to offer has been immensely influenced making it way too effortless to deploy, consume, and access.

    The benefits of integrating API’s along with an automatic data transfer across several interfaces include:

    • Fully automatic
    • Only requires the execution of analysis making the complex software applications needless
    • No data extraction required, just the necessary results are given
    • Cost-effective
    • Repeatable process

    API is not just a calculator; it validates the inputs in comparison to the database to be sure that the inputs given are reasonable. Not only this, even the results are cross-referenced contrary to the different data sources and results from the former corresponding analysis. APIs advanced encryption technology remarkably lessens the hacking chances. With its authentication and authorization technology, it makes sure that users with the correct access and rights are allowed to use.

    Why you should integrate API?

    APIs full lifecycle management gives scope to plan, design, implement, test, publish, operate, consume, maintain, version, and retire. It works by targeting the portal of a developer and regulates the group of developers who have embedded the APIs, checks for the runtime management, and evaluates the API value along with the analytics. Having an API-first approach will help your business to achieve speed and agility, better revenue channels, and will be data-driven. Now, let’s check out the three major API-driven enablers that would help your organization to reach a decision based on the data:

    1. Instant Data Access: The well-timed use of data is the major aspect of being data-driven. The traditional integration methods would either run daily or on weekly basis, integrating APIs would secure the micro consistency even across the systems. This would help the businesses like retail to access real-time sales performance. Another example where the API integration will be helpful is in the automotive industry, customers can easily access the real-time data related to their automobiles and other services around it.
    2. Automated Governing: The machine learning techniques are mostly accurate and robust, try to incorporate the real-time and contextual data into the decisions enabled by your machine. Leverage this in retail and B2B setting to analyze the data and then use it accordingly.
    3. Amalgamation of Definitions and Business Logic: When the context and business logic are incorporated in the API, the system automatically verifies the data in terms of data understanding and intention. All you have to do is to give a standard mechanism to the data documentation and apply business logic and the user using API will be given data that can be analyzed and used later by the organization.

    Now, build a fully digital workflow that is more productive by leveraging the top tools to create, deploy, and manage your APIs. Some of the top API management tools are 3scale, Ambassador, Apiman, DreamFactory, Kong, KrakenD, MuleSoft Anypoint Platform, Netflix Zuul, Tyk, and WSO2 API Manager.

    Conclusion:
    Thinking about where to start from? The correct way to start is with a small-scale, economical, and correct API initiative that should have a strong API business strategy instead of directly launching it for an extensive audience. To deliver the correct experience to the end-user the API should be created mindfully. Incorporate testing during the early stages of design, development, and integrations to identify the potential risks. It would also amaze you to see the various ways in which your API is utilized by third parties, thus making a progress towards the new digital ecosystem.

  • Scrum and its relation with the Science of Goal Achievement

    In this blog, we will look at how Scrum is related to the science of goal achievement.

    Clarity

    Human beings are more motivated to work towards achieving a goal if they have Crystal clear picture of the goal to be achieved. – Ewa Pietrzak

    Clarity breeds Mastery – Robin Sharma 

    With Scrum the Backlog Grooming sessions are part of the planning for the next Sprint. During this session, the team gets together and discusses on the tasks to be performed for the next Sprint.

    An important role is played by the Platform Analyst/Business Analyst to bring in clarity on the requirements for each task to be considered for the next Sprint .

    At the end of this session each team member should have complete clarity on the requirements for the tasks to be considered for the next Sprint.

    Planning and Preparation

    Human Beings are  more likely to work towards accomplishing a goal if they are prepared and have identified the required steps. – Brendon Burchard

    If the Mind cannot see the steps required for the completion of a task the Heart will ask to pause. -Brendon Burchard

    During the Sprint planning session the team goes through the tasks identified during the Backlog Grooming session .

    With the clarity received from the Backlog Grooming session the team is well equipped to provide estimates for the tasks Team members provide estimates in terms of Story points and work hours for each of the tasks .

    The Scrum Master looks the overall workload for each team member, discusses the priority of each task and plans the works for the next Sprint .

    At the end of the Sprint planning session each team member has complete clarity on the goals and expectations set for him for the next Sprint.

    Reduce Overwhelm

    If the Human brain is overwhelmed it tends to freeze and shifts to inaction .

    Having the picture of the bigger project is important but it can be quite overwhelming for the human brain to continuously look at all the pieces at all the time . Also a lot of Overwhelm comes from being continuously distracted . Human beings tend to be more productive if they are completely focused on a few tasks at a given point of time.

    Software projects are quite dynamic in nature , there are lots of moving pieces , unclear areas and feedback to be gathered from the Product Owners/Customers. With Scrum a bigger project is broken into smaller Sprints. Although there is a view of the entire project , tasks are prioritized and grouped into smaller Sprints, the tasks which require more clarity/discussions are moved to later Sprints.

    During the execution of a Sprint the team is completely focused on the tasks identified for the Sprint and they are not continuously looking at all the tasks for the complete project.

    There is very less distractions as new or unplanned activities don’t chip in. They are moved to the backlog where they are prioritized and considered for the later Sprints.

    Momentum and Small Wins

    Many times the difference between winning and losing is momentum .Positive Momentum creates an environment of wining and high morale .

    Momentum is the great exaggerator . Momentum has the capability to exaggerate things than they really are.With Momentum the team performs more than their capabilities .     – John Maxwell

    Scrum naturally brings momentum to the project as the bigger project is broken down into smaller Sprints. Each Sprint is a mini project in itself. Completion of a Sprint brings a feeling of accomplishment and winning and it naturally builds the overall momentum in the project

    Social Accountability

    Human beings are less likely to procrastinate if they socialize their agenda with other people. It’s harder to procrastinate when your name, your integrity and your relationships are on the line . Human beings need to speak about their goals with other people who can hold them accountable.

    Speaking out your goals makes it more likely that you will take action on your goals.    -Brendon Burchard

    With daily standups each team member share the status and the challenges of their tasks with the entire team.Since they have shared their work agenda with other team members they  more likely to strive towards completion of their tasks .

    Feedback and Celebration

    So many people deserve to feel so much better about themselves, they deserve to feel stronger and capable and confident but they are waiting for the achievement of the bigger goal. However from a goal achievement perspective unless people take small steps and give credit for those steps they will not be motivated to take bigger steps. – Brendon Burchard

    It is very important that we celebrate the small wins and provide timely feedback to keep the team motivated

    Retrospective meetings provide an excellent opportunity to provide feedback about the overall progress and individual team members. It provides an opportunity to celebrate and appreciate the work done by the team. If used effectively it can be a great tool to motivate the team to achieve higher goals.

  • Adoption of ETL in Data Warehouse

    ETL is Extract, Transform and Load. It is basically a process that ‘extracts’ the data from numerous sources, then ‘transforms’ them by applying calculations, concatenations etc. and lastly ‘loads’ the data into Data Warehouse system.

    It may seem to you like a simple process wherein data warehouse creating is just all about extraction, transforming and loading. However, the process, in reality, is quite complex. The process involves constant monitoring and inputs from experts like developers, testers, analysts, and top executives.  Also, this process is a recurring activity on a daily, weekly or monthly bases and need to be very well documented, automated and agile.

    So, what are the many benefits of adopting ETL?

    Why do you need ETL?

     

    We can give you more than one reasons as to why your organisation needs ETL.

    1. With ETL, companies can better analyse their business data and take more informed business decisions.
    2. ETL makes data migration into a data warehouse possible and easier. You can convert data into different formats and types to maintain uniformity and consistency.
    3. Your transactional databases will not be able to give you all answers regarding complex business needs that ETL can easily do.
    4. With ETL, you can compare sample data between the target and the source system.
    5. It also helps to enhance productivity since it can code and reuse data without the need of any specific technical skills.
    6. ETL also facilitates rules regarding data transformation, aggregation and calculation.
    7. The Data Warehouse automatically updates when the data source changes.

     

    The ETL Process: Various Steps

     

    We will now look at the various steps in the ETL Process in brief.

    Step 1 – Extraction

    This is the first step of the ETL architecture. This step mainly involves the extraction of data from the source to the staging area.All necessary transformations are also carried out here in the staging area so that the source system doesn’t get disturbed. The main sources may include some of the legacy applications like customised applications. ERP, text files, Mainframes etc. Therefore, Data warehouse should be able to integrate systems with varying DBMS, OS and communication protocols.

    So, before proceeding with data extraction, you must have a logical data map that will clearly define the relationship between the target and the source data.

    Basically, there are three Data Extraction methods:

    1. Full Extraction
    2. Partial Extraction without update notification.
    3. Partial Extraction with update notification

     

    Step 2 – Transformation

    The data that we have extracted in the first step is usually in its raw form and cannot be used. Therefore, it has to undergo cleaning, mapping and proper transformation. This is the main step where ETL actually adds value to the extracted data to generate insightful business reports for you. There can be some direct move or pass through data – the data that doesn’t need any kind of processing and transformation.

    One important highlight of this step is that one can carry out customised data operations. Say, for example, if the first name and the last name in a table is placed in two different columns, with the help of ETL, you can concatenate them before proceeding to loading.

    Some of the data integrity problems include use of different names like Cleaveland and Cleveland, multiple denotation of company names, different spellings of the name of the same person and blank fields in some files.

    Some of the validations to be done at this stage include character set conversion and encoding handling, using lookups to merge data, conversion of units of measurements for uniformity, transposing rows and columns and so on.

    Step 3 – Loading

    This is the last step in the ETL Process. Considering a typical data warehouse, usually there are large volumes of data that need to be loaded in short periods of time. This calls for an optimisation in the performance of the loading process.

    We also have to have a backup plan in mind in case of load failure. There should be good recovery mechanisms that will restart the process from the point where it failed and ensure no loss of data and integrity. The admins have to monitor, resume and cancel loads according to the performance of the server at that point in time. There are three types of loading:

    1. Initial Load — where you populate all the tables in the data warehouse.
    2. Incremental Load — where you can apply ongoing changes on a need basis.
    3. Full Refresh —where you can erase the contents of one or more tables and reload completely new data.

     

    Some of the popular ETL Tools

     

    While there are many available Data Warehousing tools, let us look at some of the most popular and widely used ones.

    1. Oracle

    This has been the industry-leading database for quite some time now. With its wide range of choices in data warehouse solutions, it helps to optimise user experiences and enhances operational efficiency.

    Check it out here: https://www.oracle.com/index.html

    2. MarkLogic

    This solution makes data integration very easy and fast, thanks to its range of enterprise features. It is capable of querying multitudes of data like metadata, relationships, documents etc.

    Check it out here: https://www.marklogic.com/product/getting-started/

    3. Pentaho

    Pentaho is a business intelligence software. It provides the following services: data integration, data mining and extract, transform and load capabilities, OLAP services, information dashboards, reporting etc.

    Check it out here: https://www.hitachivantara.com/en-us/products/data-management-analytics.html

    So, we now have a basic idea of the ETL Process and how it is carried out. There are a few things that you need to keep in mind to ensure that your process is as smooth as possible. You must never try to clean all the data as it would take a lot of time and effort and may cost you a fortune! To speed up query processing, you should have auxiliary views and indexes. Similarly there are some other aspects that you must be aware about the ETL Process.

    But, if you are not and you don’t want to worry about all these technicalities, you can simply reach out to us for all your data warehouse needs! Experts at EOV have years of experience in the best practices in ETL and will surely help you carry out the process of extraction, transformation and loading in the most hassle-free manner! Get in touch with us today!