Legacy Systems in Healthcare: Key Insights and Reasons to Update

Quick Summary: Legacy systems in healthcare have become a challenge for organizations that hinder their growth and hamper operational efficiency. This article shows how healthcare organizations suffer because of their legacy systems and presents ways to modernize these systems in a safer way. Stay tuned to grab the details!

No matter how much you love your old dress, at some point in time, you replace it with a newer one when it no longer fits you, or it goes out of fashion. The same goes for software and IT technology, you upgrade to the latest advancements when existing systems are outdated regardless of how comfortable you are with your legacy systems.

There are many healthcare organizations that stick to their legacy systems even today which could be a risky bid. Failing to upgrade your healthcare IT systems exposes you to never-ending problems, hefty maintenance, and unwanted costs. Besides, the continuous use of legacy systems in healthcare is a major cause of data breaches, failed compliances, and scalability issues.

Many companies like Delta Airlines had to face a dire situation because of outdated technologies. Delta Airlines based in the USA had a nightmare situation when it had to face a loss of $150 million due to a computer glitch that resulted in the cancellation of 4000+ flights and passengers stranded for hours. It was found that a legacy computer crash caused this trouble.

This shows how disruptive a legacy system for your organization can be. You need to modernize your system to leverage the benefits of the latest technologies and trends. Modernizing your healthcare systems offers lots of benefits like advanced features, stronger security, higher performance, and more.

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What is a Legacy System in Healthcare?

Legacy systems in healthcare are outdated software or technology that organizations continue to use even today. For example, using old EHR and EMR software which are no longer supported or updated by the vendor.

Using these old systems is both risky and costly. Therefore, upgrading to a new and up-to-date system becomes crucial to ensure a smooth workflow and better productivity for healthcare organizations.

Usually, these legacy healthcare systems aren’t easy to replace because they handle vital organizational processes. So, healthcare organizations need the right digital transformation strategy to update their systems.

Reasons why technology become outdated:

• End of Life (EOL) system, when support for technology is ended.
• The vendor is not maintaining or updating the technology anymore.
• When technology loses relevance in the industry due to new options.
• If the system fails to meet your business needs or is not scalable anymore.

Challenges and Risks Involving Legacy Healthcare Systems

It can be a potential threat to your organization if you are still using outdated healthcare software or technology. It not just makes your crucial data vulnerable but can also damage your reputation. Let’s check the major challenges and risks with healthcare legacy systems.

Security Risks

Security is a big concern with legacy healthcare solutions as they are inherently obsolete technology. As software gets older, vendors stop providing support or updating it to focus on newer versions. Consequently, organizations no longer receive new software updates for their healthcare systems that include patches for security fixes. So, the system becomes vulnerable to security breaches. They also lack new advanced security features like firewalls and encryption. Cybercriminals can exploit such security weaknesses and steal your data.

Incompatibility Issues

In modern business environments, tools and technologies are integrated with each other to perform tasks from any endpoint. However, legacy systems in healthcare are hard to integrate with modern systems due to their incompatible technologies as they use specific APIs and modules for integration. For example, it will be difficult to integrate old EMR systems with modern digital health systems due to their outdated APIs, protocols, and architecture.

Inefficiencies and Glitches

It’s not uncommon for a type of healthcare software system that is outdated to show unusual behavior because it runs on legacy code and hardware that can fail abruptly. These issues hamper the overall productivity of a healthcare organization.

Scalability Issues

Scaling a legacy healthcare system is anything but easy. Older architecture, tech stack, and coding practices are roadblocks in scaling those systems. So, you will have to reengineer your legacy healthcare software and upgrade hardware to achieve scalability which is going to be a costly and complex process.

Compliance Issues

Having a compliance issue with legacy healthcare systems is natural as they are using old protocols and standards. For instance, these systems often use HTTP instead of the new secure HTTPS protocol. Similarly, they fail to comply with standards like HIPAA compliance. Overall, these systems lack up-to-date security protocols and tools that fail to meet strict data protection compliances of modern time.

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Reasons Why Some Organizations Prefer Not to Upgrade Their Legacy Healthcare Systems

The use of legacy software and technologies in healthcare is widespread and often organizations prefer these systems over updated ones for several reasons as follows:

• Healthcare legacy systems are battle-tested and have been in use successfully for a long time.
• The existing system is well-optimized for an organization’s operations, and it works well.
• Organizations fear service disruption that compels them to stay with outdated systems.
• Insufficient funds are another reason for not upgrading the legacy systems in healthcare.
• Executives fail to quantify the real value of TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) of legacy systems and don’t feel an urgency to upgrade.

Why is Modernizing Your Healthcare Legacy System Important?

You have seen the different drawbacks of legacy systems in healthcare above that pose significant challenges to your organization. Indeed, over time, outdated systems become a serious roadblock to your growth. They affect your agility and leave no room for innovation. Therefore, healthcare system modernization becomes the need of the hour. Modernizing your legacy healthcare solutions offers many advantages as follows:

• Future-ready System: Your healthcare organization will be future-ready by modernizing your systems with the latest technologies.
• Lower Maintenance Cost: There will be a significant reduction in maintenance costs after modernizing your old system.
• Enhanced Security: Modernization enables you to upgrade your software and security protocols that improve overall system security.
• Agility and Efficiency: Upgrading to a new system will boost the operational efficiency and agility of your healthcare organization.
• High Business Value: It generates more ROI than outdated systems with less consumption of resources and better value.

What are Different Approaches for Healthcare System Modernization?

Replacing an old system is not easy, especially when it is pivotal for your organization. However, there are different modernization strategies that solve this problem and help you upgrade your outdated healthcare system without disrupting your existing processes.

Rehosting

This strategy is also known as lift and shift migration where digital operations from older on-premises systems are moved to the cloud without any modifications. So, in this case, your underlying infrastructure will change to the cloud where all your healthcare software will be loaded and run. Rehosting is a low-cost, quick, easy, and low-risk option for modernizing your legacy healthcare system that also keeps the logic intact.

Replatforming

It is similar to rehosting. In this method, your digital operations are moved to the cloud from on-premises healthcare systems. However, it involves optimizations for the new platform. So, the software is not rebuilt but adapted to adjust to the new environment. Due to platform-specific optimizations, re-platforming offers better performance.

Refactoring

Refactoring is about code restructuring or rewriting one or more components of software to expand its life, optimize performance, and improve its logic. Basically, it involves improving the software incrementally with updated features without modifying the external behavior. With this approach, you can recode some parts of your software to leverage the benefits of cloud-native features.

Rearchitecting

It’s a complete overhauling of software with new architecture and capabilities. Redesigning software with microservices architecture from monolithic architecture is a good example. Rearchitecting helps you achieve improved software performance, scalability, agility, and reduced costs of ownership.

Rebuilding

You can create a new system from scratch based on your business needs. The necessary legacy components are rewritten to fit into the new system and modern functionalities are added. Rebuilding allows you to build a highly secure and agile system that works to modern standards. However, rebuilding the system is costly and risky because it involves drastic modifications in the system.

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Modernize Your Healthcare Legacy System with a Reliable Tech PartnerModernizing your legacy healthcare IT system is important for the sake of scalability, performance, and security. However, upgrading legacy digital health solutions takes much time, effort, and planning. Therefore, you must take expert assistance to modernize your healthcare legacy system.You can rely on Radixweb to meet your goals with a seasoned team that makes the transition smooth and hassle-free. As a trusted legacy software modernization company, we choose the best modernization strategy and update your systems like it is our own.Reach out to us for a brief discussion about your requirements and let us come up with a detailed plan for your modernization bid. We assure you that it will be a seamless transition without affecting your existing systems.