Internet of Things: A High-Tech Tool for Improved Healthcare

IoT, is everywhere—in your office, phone, house, vehicles, and now it’s driven straight into your doctor’s clinic. The Internet of Things, of course, takes different forms in all these areas, but the effect has more or less been similar—how easily we’ve been doing things around, and quick! The technology has substituted the conventional and obsolete ways of doing things, be it automating the daily chores to connecting millions of devices across the globe. We’re evolving ourselves as the technology is becoming imperative in our lives for the better. One example is the global reform in the healthcare sector. Remember the days when driving your way to the doctor was the only option they could treat you. Sometimes, you skipped the visit and ended up medicating yourself if the clinic was miles away from your place. Now, you can consult the physician over a telephonic or video call and get the work done instantly. You no more have to wait for weeks to fix an appointment. How simpler could it get? Well, the IoT services developed by the IoT app development companies are to be thanked for contributing to the innovation and catalyzing advancement to the technology.

More ideas are hanging up there that's yet to be conceived, taking the world up another level. Until then, let’s check out what’s already in the store that has taken the healthcare industry by storm.

Telemedicine

Video calling is no more limited to just talking to your family or friends. Even the doctors today are relying more on teleconferencing to consult the expert doctors. They say it helps them diagnose more patients (especially those who’re remote) being online. They can deliver quality treatment on time that helps patients convalesce speedily. Video conferencing allows the medical specialists to train the new employees across different hospitals simultaneously. One of the biggest advantages is that a medical expert sitting miles away can watch and emulate a live surgery without causing interruption, thus, saving a valuable life on time. All in all, it aids in saving time & cost of travel, sharing knowledge, making informed decisions, and improving doctor-patient relationship—all conducive to augmenting productivity in the healthcare business.

Drones

These tiny, flying robots offer a host of benefits. The drones are extensively being used to deliver healthcare and medical supplies like pharmaceuticals, vaccines, and blood to the rural, underdeveloped and developing regions. Such use of drones addresses the issue of resource imbalance across the periphery. Drones and telemedicine are likely to merge into a solution in the coming years, and the convergence is intended to provide valuable information during the medical emergencies and varying circumstances.

Fitness Wearables

A fair share of consumers today are quitting the conventional watches and switching over to smartwatches. Reason being that these devices comprise of inbuilt heart rate, step count, and sleep trackers that enable you to monitor your daily activities and overall health. These watches are connected to your smartphones that follow your steps wherever you go, and give you accurate data analytics. It’s not limited to the smartwatches. There are peripherals and smartphone accessories that extend the competencies of smartphones for at-home healthcare uses. The healthcare industry is betting money on diverse mobile wearables that predict post-surgical complications, warn early on foreseen cardiac arrest, and provide valuable information of patients for them to be treated in a better way. As the devices’ information is shared with the providers in real-time, a timely intervention and rapid start of the treatment can make a lot of difference. These devices are not just a vogue, rather important diagnostic and precautionary tools to enhance the healthcare industry.

Robots

Robots are a vital part of any complicated surgical procedures these days. The surgeons can manipulate a robot from a central location to perform a surgery skillfully. Also, it doesn’t require much medical personnel to be present during the operation. Besides, certain complex procedures like urethra suturing during prostate cancer surgery require highest skills and care to operate as the urethra is so tiny and delicate. In such cases, small robotic extensions can be built to go to the places where a human hand finds trouble reaching. Thus, it lowers the possibilities of complications and recuperation time of patients.

Round-up

The advancement in the technologies has allowed the medical practices to be available and accessible for rural applications more quickly than deploying healthcare workforce. The technology does carry its demerits, but, that largely depends on the purpose and how we put it into use. If we capitalize this adaptable technology at the right place and right time, it’s sure to captivate us with its rewards and a better future just around the corner. Until then, it’s no harm we see.

Ways to Earn Rewards With Popular Software Development Models

The software development companies all over the globe are gearing up to inculcate every new technology gushing into the market every other day. The competition is extreme and they want to stay ahead of the time to reach out to the consumers before the other does. The consumers always demand something extraordinarily innovative to satisfy their needs. This propels the IT companies to continuously experiment with technologies, tools and diverse platforms to develop unique and ubiquitous products that could achieve them a breakthrough in the industry and market. For each product, software, or application they build, a definite procedure is followed by the dedicated developers in India and across the world. This procedure is called software development lifecycle that incorporates various phases of product development and models around which the applications are developed and tested. These models are project management methodologies that allow you to make important decisions, organize and prioritize your work according to client requirements. Let’s stroll down a few of these models and explore when you should use each one.

AGILE

Agile methodology follows an incremental and iterative approach while working on a software project. Rather than fixing a plan beforehand, it lends freedom in adapting to the changing requirements over the time and relies on customer feedback. Cross-functional teams work on different iterations where each lasts for three to four weeks. Each iteration produces a working software of a requirement and is organized in a backlog which is delivered later based on customer value. The Agile model enhances face-to-face communication while promoting accountability, team-work, leadership, and customer satisfaction. This model provides a good deal of flexibility to the developers. As the Agile model encourages feedback from the users and the team, it helps in improving the forthcoming iterations. Since customers are involved throughout the project development, they can provide inputs on the work being delivered and also on the end product. Besides, as the whole project is broken down into iterations, the teams can focus on developing high-quality software, unit test each component and later integrate.

SCRUM

Scrum is a subset framework for implementing Agile used to manage dense software development along with an application and product development. Unlike Agile, here the iterations last for a fixed duration, say one to two weeks allowing the teams to deliver software at regular intervals. The planning of the next sprint follows next. The model follows a definite set of activities, roles, responsibilities, and meetings. Scrum is a prescriptive framework that comes with its own advantages. It is easy to accommodate evolving changes during the development phase due to short sprints and customer feedback. Continuous communication enables the team to tackle the issues and changes as and when they occur. This helps in lowering the expenses by correcting the mistakes that appear in an early stage and improve the quality. The model infuses transparency and project visibility amongst the team as daily meetings ensure a clear picture of who is doing what.

KANBAN

Kanban is a visual framework that implements Agile, however, unlike Scrum, this model isn’t based on a predefined set of processes. It suggests minute, gradual changes to your system that shows what, when and how to produce. Kanban is often called a “pull system” for its ability to pull in new work only when the team is less or not occupied with the existing work, as displayed on the team’s visual Kanban board. This enables the team to align the work to its collective capacity and increase flexibility and output. Kanban is easy to understand and can be quickly implemented which doesn’t require any prior knowledge of the methodology. Since there are no fixed time bounds, the priorities of the sprints can always be reevaluated as and when the information flows in. It saves a considerable amount of time by ensuring that the team doesn’t spend much time on unfeasible tasks. Regular delivery of software optimizes the workflow of team by helping them stay focused on a particular task.

Closure

The software development methodologies help in attaining desired objectives. However, choosing the right model that suits the best to your business requirements is important as each model comes with its own benefits and trade-offs. Laying out clear functional and non-functional requirements, constant communication with the client, and continuous evolvement powered by the customer feedback play critical to the success of your software product.

(Source: https://www.promptsoftech.com/blog/earn-rewards-with-software-development-models/)

Conquer CRM with These Affordable and Powerful Trends

It’s been quite some years now since CRM has captured the software industry like none other. Blame it on the versatility with an array of features that CRM offers, why wouldn’t anyone want to make the best of it then? The goal is to do up the most amazing applications that would help users ease their tasks, track sales, maintain customer engagements, and manage a business in the most efficient way with Microsoft Dynamics CRM. In the recent years, we’ve witnessed a plenty of developments surfacing in CRM like bug fixing, releasing new versions with appended features, and amending the existing functionalities to further enhance the system. There’s been no looking around since its adoption by a number of MS Dynamics CRM developers across CRM development companies all over the globe.

While a new generation of CRM has been doing the rounds for some time now, it’s time we look at the trends that will scale the IT industry up another level this year.

Artificial Intelligence

Intelligent CRM is another feather in the hat of new generation CRM for its ability to think cognitively. Earlier, CRM was intelligent only enough to work by following the instructions as passed by a human programmer, similar to conventional programming system. But that was it. However, ever since the conception of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in CRM, the machines are able to make own decisions by recognizing and extrapolating the patterns based on initial instructions passed externally. AI, an amalgamation of technologies like machine learning, big data analytics, predictive analytics, etc., is offering everything- from customer service to personal assistance. For instance, AI will be able to recommend customers a variety of products based on parameters like their buying habits, marketplace trends, local demography, etc. in real time while the customer is checking out the shelves of your store in physical or online. On the contrary, it may also suggest a few investment tips to the marketers on where their money is being spent the best. The goal is to make decisions easily by capitalizing data generated through digital interactions established worldwide.

System Integration

System Integration is one of the toughest tasks that developers face irrespective of the technology they work in, especially when the two systems are weak or poor. The ability to integrate is often considered as a measure of software quality. If you are able to integrate it with the other system easily, then your software is probably an efficient system. And, if not, there are fair chances your system will not sustain for long. System Integration is prominently important for business as data needs to be accessed by numerous other systems as a part of the learning process of AI. In the previous year, the consumers witnessed many businesses relying increasingly on real-time data that gained them the opportunities to expand their marketing, sales and services activities. Conversely, 2017 will observe optimized, smart and coherent utilization of data.

App Engagement

Applications have become a necessity for businesses to stay ahead of the time and survive in the competitive market. Therefore, many organizations are getting into mobile application development to expand their customer base to meet the ever increasing demands. Apps are condensed versions of websites which are robust with responsive designs and deliver specific functionalities. With this, vendors are able to increase customer engagement as they enable the customers to manage their product experience and services according to their needs through a digital medium. Since a few years now, CRM offers solutions similar to portals that reveal parts of your CRM in a protected way to the customers, or anyone who can add to the data in your CRM.

Conclusion

These are the three trends that we’ll be keeping our eyes on. Perhaps, a brainstorming session with your team on these CRM trends could help you make a headway in the industry. Keep innovating!

(Source: https://www.promptsoftech.com/blog/conquer-crm-with-affordable-powerful-trends/)

Why You Should Absolutely Endorse a Micro App

What if the mobile apps provide a customized view to you and show you only what you need? That is always a demand by the busiest people who have the least time to surf through pages and a whole load of data to find what they need. They want their solutions instantly, hands-down, and as simple! Well, you ask it and Micro Apps have it. Micro Apps are no bulky, traditional mobile apps built by almost every other custom mobile app development company worldwide. These apps are the modest, optimized manifestations of large and complicated apps, and deliver single-functionality interface to the users. So the good part is- you focus on a specific problem and obtain a task-based solution without having to navigate through the entire app. Micro Apps are built using HTML and are accessible from both mobile and computer devices through a browser. You may consider a weather forecast app or Facebook Messenger for that matter which is specifically built to allow real-time chatting between users.

The concept holds a lot of importance for IT organizations who vie to furnish enterprise mobility services to the users. Their foremost challenge is to deliver the app functionality as quickly by deploying minimum resources and secondly, deliver extraordinary UX to instigate espousal. They believe, rather than taking up huge projects to develop multi-functionality enterprise mobile apps, micro apps focus on building targeted section of functionality in an application. Hence, more companies are reevaluating their mobile app strategy and capitalizing on micro apps to maintain a firm stand in the consumer market. Here’s why the concept of the micro app is skyrocketing and the companies are joining the bandwagon.

Mobile Apps Have Become Onerous

As mobile technologies advance, mobile app developers develop bulky and intricate applications based on tools used for company branding and ideas acquired from customer interaction. Many times, an organization ultimately lands up building a mobile app as a compact version of its website. Since enterprises refuse to minimize the functionalities for better usability, they develop large mobile apps that occupy considerable storage space and phone resources to run efficiently. This results in customers complaining about the increased loading time and difficult navigation of such apps wherein they are unable to access exactly what they want in just a few clicks.

Rising Production Costs of Mobile Apps

In the process of competing against larger organizations, smaller companies end up investing all of their capital in developing unfeasible and complicated mobile applications which hardly finish. As a result, many possibly useful apps lose out on the opportunity to feature in various app stores as the company’s budget falls short of high production costs.

Users Demand a Facile Experience

Users, generally, do not like browsing the whole app as in the case of websites. They want an app that offers quick, specific solution to their targeted problem which can save their time and effort spent on performing the same task on the website. And there is where the mobile apps fail to impress users. Mobile apps are built elaborately; having splash screens, menus, and separate sections where users lose more time than they anticipate accessing what they really want.

Précis

Micro apps gain an inclination here as they solve all the above-mentioned issues easily. These micro apps are light in size, minimize usage of phone resources, and give greater control to the users to access exactly what they want, without any trouble. Users can enjoy a customized version of the micro app by integrating it in mobile device and computer system, letting them switch from one interface to another in an easy and flawless way. Therefore, micro apps stand as a strong competitor against the mobile apps and may soon be a makeshift of the same. The novel approach will give a fresh lease of life to the companies to redefine their branding and customer retention strategies, and amplify their scope in an effective manner.

(Source: https://www.promptsoftech.com/blog/why-you-should-absolutely-endorse-micro-app/)

How to Harness the Power of IoT for a Smarter Living

Amidst all the hullabaloo stirred up by the smart devices taking the technology epoch to another level, IoT is certainly the next big thing to talk! We are on the way to innovating devices that could minimize our efforts to accomplish tasks, or might even end up doing on their own! These smart devices and applications have brought a wave of revolution that is transforming the way how humans work and interact with their surroundings. Thanks to IoT, that has not only made it easy to connect with people and technology, but has also given us a greater control over all the corners of life- home, workplace, streets, and beyond. IoT is redefining the way of connecting smart devices with people and ordinary objects. The IoT application development has replaced the mundane, passé objects with smart gadgets that can interact with us. There are a few life changing improvements that these smart devices are initiating.

The power of inter connectivity is derived from the underlying fact that these smart devices minimize the susceptibility to errors and allow us to manage things without fussing over.

We’ve stacked up a few of those blooming IoT ideas and products that are sure to lead you to a smarter, connected living!

Personalized Experience:

Using our smartphones as connecting hub, we can directly connect to our home, turn on/off the lights, and lock the front door, as and when we command. Such IoT applications are already available in the market and we’re likely to see more people buying the IoT devices in the coming years. Talk about Amazon Echo that easily interacts with you, play music and audio books, set alarms, provide real-time information on traffic and weather, and control a bunch of other devices- powered by the voice-controlled intelligent personal assistant Alexa. Personal assistants like Alexa hold the potential to provide us with the best, personalized experience and help us make decisions faster and better.

More Awareness:

There are a lot of things in our life which do not pose much of a problem, or probably we do not sense them as worries that need attention. You might have at least once fret over the gas stove you may have left on or the front door you forgot to lock. But you couldn’t do much when you’re away at your office. Here, the smart appliances like a smoke detector and smart lock help in doing away with these worries. The Nest Protect smoke alarm alerts your phone when it detects smoke in your house or even a burning toast in your kitchen for that matter. The Nest Cam sends the recording of anyone who has entered your house in your absence.

Efficient Driving:

Large companies like Apple, Tesla, Uber, and Google are eyeing on a future where cars would be driving themselves and to see it coming soon, these corporates are investing money big time. These smart cars collect, analyze and act on a large number of data points to choose the right route and function aptly. These self-driving, smart cars are an IoT innovation in themselves. You can think of owning a smart car sometime soon that would self-diagnose problems or even call the police when it meets with an accident. Gartner suggests that there would be 250,000,000 connected cars out on the road by 2020.

Wrap up!

IoT devices and applications are doing way more than just simplifying our living and work experience. As they are emerging every fortnight, their growing numbers are hinting toward the world that would probably work on their demands rather than ours. IoT app development companies are uncovering a future that will mark another accomplishment for mankind in the history of innovation.

(Source: https://www.promptsoftech.com/blog/harness-power-iot-applications-smarter-living/)

Competitive Mobile Apps That Will Explode Your Business

Where people are rushing toward expanding their business and customer base by out and-out usage of mobile technology, we see an outrageous number of mobile applications gushing into the market every day. Blame it on the smartphone that has taken the world on the ramp of revolution which is determined to linger at least until the next big thing is in. Mobile users like you and me have hackneyed a host of mobile applications which have significantly affected our lives so much so that we could barely keep our hands off our smartphones. So what goes into making such versatile and over-the-top mobile applications? Well, there’s in fact a lot for us to discover that these applications are beyond a mere merger of high-end features and appealing designs. The technologies implemented, platforms supported, and the languages used to build these applications play critical in determining the scope, acceptance, usage and success of mobile application development. There are indeed three different categories of applications, serving disparate purposes, being developed by mobile app developers and each application belongs to some or the other category. Let’s dive into each one and gain a deeper understanding of how these applications are turning heads in the market!

• Native App

Native Apps are designed and developed to run on specific platform or device. These apps are primarily coded and built using a particular language, say Java for Android platform and Objective-C or Swift to support iOS platform. Since these apps are developed to execute in particular OS, they are comparatively faster and reliable. However, at the same time, it increases the development cost as the apps are platform-specific and ought to be replicated to support other platforms. For your applications to support several platforms, you got to maintain a different software which becomes complex and heavy on the pocket. While users download and install the Native apps from respective app stores like Google Play Store for Android devices and Apple App Store for iOS devices, there are certain apps that can run without an internet connection too. Besides, the Native apps can easily access the device’s internal applications like address book and camera. Instagram is the perfect example of the Native app.

• Web App

Web applications are authentically websites that appear similar to Native apps and are coded using HTML5, stored on the remote server, and run through a browser. These apps can be accessed by navigating to desired URLs and installing these on the device by bookmarking the page. Whereas, the mobile web applications that run on the mobile phone’s web browser are created using JavaScript and HTML5. The mobile web apps are fetched and run from the mobile web browser as and when needed, thereby they do not occupy any separate space on the mobile device. HTML5 has been widely accepted as a powerful tool to build interactive and customized web applications that fade away the distinction between web apps and normal web pages. Web application development is seen to expand with its growing popularity as it can run effortlessly on all types of browsers starting from Safari, Android Browser, Opera Mini, BlackBerry Browser, and the likes. The best example of the Web app is Moodboard.

• Hybrid App

Hybrid apps are an amalgamation of features of both Native and Web apps. They are built using JavaScript and HTML5 and run through the web browser. The HTML page is rendered and JavaScript is processed locally using device’s browser engine, and the app is run in the device’s native container. This process allows the Hybrid applications to access the device’s capabilities like a camera or internal storage. Mobile app development companies replace the existing web pages with Hybrid apps rather than building a separate app and leverage the peculiarities of the category time and again which often fetches them a noticeable presence in the app store. In addition, the Hybrid app enables building cross-platform apps as the HTML components can be conveniently used over different operating systems, depleting time and cost of development. PhoneGap and Rubymotion are two of the popular Hybrid app development tools while Basecamp is a good example of Hybrid App.

The Final Word

It is important to consider various aspects and factors before deciding which type of app would suit your business needs. Native and Hybrid apps provide rich product experiences but are heavier on the costs while Web apps are lighter on the pockets and don’t really require much access to device’s internal features. Analyzing your current priorities and future prospects is the best way to choose what amongst these works best for you.

ASP.NET Application Development: Myths Busted!

ASP.NET Development Platform designed by Microsoft is one of the oldest running web application development platforms. The technology encompasses remarkable versatility by supporting diverse application domains including CRM, websites, accounting, finance, inventory apps, supply management, security, and so forth. This helps ASP.NET achieve accreditation as most in-demand technology today. The .NET Framework offers a comprehensive management tool that allows development, testing and deployment of a software on one platform. Apart from this, the platform also features ASP.NET MVC Framework Development Services which has made web development in ASP.NET as easy and flawless as it can be. MVC offers a fast and powerful way to build dynamic websites and sophisticated applications using latest web standards whilst proving a great asset for any ASP.NET development company.

Let's take a stroll through the myths that have emerged over the years surrounding ASP.NET Application Development as we dispel each of them on the way.

• .NET Is Expensive and Unaffordable

As compared to other programming languages and platforms, ASP.NET application development seems expensive but the fact says, it isn’t! The ease and flexibility as offered in ASP.NET programming make it worth its price and affordable to any size of organization- small, medium or big. The expenses predominantly include overall cost of application development along with hosting charges which depend on the standard of the hosting services and independent of the platform.

• .NET Forbids Building Smaller Websites

ASP.NET, in fact, does not bias between any size of application- small or large. It doesn’t matter what kind of application you are creating, what all features it includes, or how much memory your application occupies as long as it meets the standards and requirements as laid down by the technology. ASP.NET provides a landmark feature wherein it decreases the total lines of code for a larger application. You just need to make sure if a proper object oriented design is in place to get the best flexibility and efficiency within your application.

• .NET Is Unstable and Complex

The biggest myth, also considered a bit passe flying around ASP.NET application development is that it is not dependable and highly complex. Microsoft provides the ASP.NET code for free. It derives a fact that ASP.NET is an open source and cross-platform service oriented architecture which is available to all and you can certainly make a version for yourself.

Wrap Up!

The key characteristics of ASP.NET include maintainability, robustness, deployment, and security which makes designing and developing an application extremely smooth and intriguing. It supports interoperability between existing applications, event-driven programming, dynamic compilation, notifications, server side scripting technology, and WYSIWYG editor tool for the development of high-functioning apps. It also provides Built-in Windows Authentication that aids in developing safe and secure apps. In addition to these features, the platform delivers caching services, early binding, on-time compilation, automatic deployment, third-party integration, drag-drop server controls, and native optimization which altogether contribute to the prolonged success of ASP.NET Application Development.