Previously known as Lotus Notes, IBM Notes is still used by over 23,000 companies, including 5,871 healthcare companies. Despite suitable alternatives, companies continue to use once-popular legacy applications like Lotus Notes.
In today’s healthcare environment, modern technology is the driving force behind improved patient care and high-quality drugs. Besides the incompatibility factor, legacy applications can bring business-related challenges in the form of:
- Limited functionality
- High maintenance costs
- Lack of data security
- Presence of data silos across the organization
- Lack of vendor support
Even worse, the presence of legacy applications in the healthcare domain can impact the quality of patient care because of:
- Delayed patient diagnosis & treatment due to lack of access to their medical records.
- Limited care for remote patients due to incompatibility with modern telehealth platforms.
- Lack of integration with medical wearables and IoT devices, which are effective at monitoring patient health (outside the medical facility)
That said, healthcare companies face challenges transitioning from legacy to modernized applications. Hence, they prefer to continue with legacy apps. Here’s why.
Why do healthcare & life sciences companies continue with legacy apps?
Here’s why healthcare and life sciences companies prefer to continue with legacy applications:
- Regulatory compliance
Globally, the healthcare and life sciences industries are heavily regulated due to their importance. Most of these industry regulations are designed to protect patient data and sensitive drug-related information.
Despite their shortcoming, legacy applications can ensure data security, while a modernized healthcare application may require additional measures to ensure regulatory compliance.
- Business downtime
Legacy apps in the healthcare domain are often critical for continuous business operations. Hence, enterprises fear moving away from “mission-critical” enterprise apps as this transition can lead to extended downtime – and loss of productivity.
- Lack of technical skills
Modern applications require the presence of skilled professionals to overcome any technical “glitches” during the transition phase. However, with the growing talent gap in the technology sector, healthcare & life sciences fail to recruit & retain resources with technology expertise.
With their existing resources, they need to invest in training them to use the new system. With legacy systems, companies don’t need to hire or train their workforce for this purpose.
- Migration-related complexities
Depending on their service life, outdated legacy systems can also pose migration-related complexities in the healthcare domain. For instance, legacy technologies may not be compatible with modern technologies like AI and data analytics, thus complicating the transition process.
Similarly, healthcare firms can face challenges migrating their data from legacy to modern apps. For instance, legacy data could be suffering from issues like:
- Poor data quality
- Duplication
- Incomplete data
- Change resistance
Healthcare professionals (including IT teams) can also “resist” the transition from legacy apps due to fears of their job security. They also perceive new technologies as a challenge to their existing skillsets and daily working patterns.
C-level executives and business leaders also fear the impact of legacy modernization on their organizational culture and business processes.
How can legacy apps still deliver business value?
Based on their business needs, healthcare and life sciences companies must carefully decide whether to modernize – or maintain – their legacy applications. For instance, legacy applications can still deliver business value due to their:
- Cost efficiency
- Compatibility with other legacy systems
- Zero business disruption
An efficient modernization strategy is also subject to the age and functionalities of the existing legacy system. Additionally, organizations must have sufficient technical and financial resources to transition and modernize their legacy apps.
Healthcare providers also need to protect their technology investments with an efficient modernization strategy that does not “fully replace” legacy apps. Here’s how they can implement this strategy:
- Evaluate the existing legacy application to identify components that are still relevant – or are obsolete for business needs.
- Define their modernization goal based on business objectives (for example, to improve patient care).
- Plan a phased approach to application modernization by identifying legacy components that can have the most impact on healthcare processes.
- Prioritize data security by implementing safe data backup and restore practices.
- Involve multiple stakeholders in the modernization planning and strategy and highlight the benefits of this transition.
With the use of APIs and middleware solutions, healthcare companies can also maintain communication between legacy and modernized systems. This can facilitate a smoother transition, thus eliminating any business disruption.
Conclusion
In the competitive healthcare space, companies need to leverage digital technology to improve their patient’s outcomes – among other business goals. However, they also need to protect their massive investments in legacy tools and applications. A streamlined legacy modernization process is the answer to the challenges faced by the healthcare and life sciences domain.
With its focus on the healthcare & life sciences, Trinus brings years of experience and domain knowledge to its global customers. Our cutting-edge technology solutions cater to industry-specific challenges and business needs.
In this blog, we have talked about how healthcare companies can operate with legacy applications. The next blog will highlight the best practices for modernizing legacy apps.
If you are looking for a reliable technology partner, get in touch at lifesciences@trinus.com.