The Detrimental Impact of Tech Debt in the Healthcare and Life Sciences Industries

Medical devices are foundational components to providing exceptional patient care and helping healthcare and life sciences organizations achieve amazing feats of discovery, research, and problem-solving to save and improve lives. An organization’s investment in a piece of technology such as the latest MRI machine, a patient monitoring platform, or a laboratory instrument is meant to improve patient care opportunities and advance the organization’s capabilities to serve its community and customers. Once these technologies are adopted, organizations rely on them and expect them to function consistently and with integrity.Medical devices and custom medical processes undergo strict scrutiny to ensure quality and consumer safety. Functionality of these devices must be stable, and any change or upgrade requires extensive quality assurance, so updating the underlying components of the technologies is not always prioritized.