How QA Shapes Better Healthcare Software (And Why It Matters More Than Ever)

At Light-it, quality isn’t just a checkbox for us. It’s part of how we think, plan, and build. Working in the healthcare space is incredibly meaningful because we know the impact our work can have on people’s lives. But that also comes with a big responsibility. When you’re building digital products for healthcare, there’s no room for cutting corners.

Over time, we’ve learned a lot by facing real-world challenges head-on. Every project has taught us something new about better serving this industry and staying aligned with strict regulations and evolving expectations. In this post, I want to share how those lessons have shaped our approach to quality, how we bring QA into every stage of our projects, and why we see it as a strategic part of doing healthcare right. Quality isn’t something we leave for the final stage. It’s built into everything we do from day one.

Table of Contents

• What Is QA in a Nutshell
• When Quality Fails So Does Trust
• Our Quality-Centered Development Process
• Putting Theory into Practice
• Building a Quality-First Culture in a World Shaped by AI
• Final Thoughts

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What Is QA in a Nutshell

Let’s break it down simply. Quality Assurance is about making sure the software we build actually does what it’s supposed to do and meets the expectations of the people who use it. It usually comes down to two big questions:

• Validation: Are we building the right thing?
• Verification: Are we building the thing right?

Validation is about making sure we understand the problem before jumping into solutions. It means checking that the requirements make sense, that they reflect what users really need, and that they align with business goals. These things aren’t always fully aligned, and catching gaps early can save a lot of trouble later.

Then comes verification, once we start building. This is where we make sure the product behaves as expected, meets both functional and non-functional requirements, and complies with the standards that apply to the project.

Beyond these two key areas, QA also brings extra value to the team. It helps surface risks early, creates a bridge between product and tech conversations, and ensures system-wide quality aspects like performance, security, and accessibility are not left behind.

When Quality Fails, So Does Trust. And That’s a Big Deal in Healthcare

When you work in healthcare, you quickly realize that quality isn’t just a nice-to-have. It’s critical.

We’ve all seen what can happen when things go wrong. Take the case from 2020 in the UK, where a technical glitch in the NHS COVID-19 reporting system caused almost 16,000 positive cases to go unreported for days. That delay meant thousands of people weren’t contacted in time, which likely contributed to the further spread of the virus (BBC).

Or going further back, the Therac-25 radiation machine in the 80s. A software bug caused patients to receive fatal overdoses of radiation (Wikipedia,). These are extreme examples, but they remind us of what's at stake.

And even when the impact isn’t that dramatic, poor quality still shows up in the form of delays, wasted resources, projects that need to be redone or just never launch, and in some cases, serious damage to a company’s reputation. In healthcare, where trust is everything, that last part can be especially tough to recover from.

That’s why we don’t think of QA as just “testing before go-live.” For us, it’s part of the bigger picture. It means making sure what we’re building makes sense, that it solves the right problem, and that it’s solid from the inside out. This is where business assurance comes in. When done right, QA helps teams move faster, stay compliant, deliver better experiences to patients and users, and scale with confidence. In the end, it’s not just about quality. It’s about helping the business succeed.

Our Quality-Centered Development Process

Over the years, all the lessons we’ve learned have helped us shape a way of working where quality isn’t something we add at the end. It’s there from day one. What we’ve built is a process that works well for us and, more importantly, works well for our clients. QA is present throughout the lifecycle of a project, and here’s how that typically looks:

Pre-sales:

Our Sales and Pre-sales team is trained to go beyond what’s explicitly said. They help uncover not only the business goals but also implicit requirements, including non-functional needs like accessibility or performance expectations. These early conversations often set the tone for quality, and we make sure they’re reflected in the proposal from the start.

Discovery:

This is where we dive deeper. QA works alongside the rest of the team to clarify requirements, validate assumptions, and identify risks. We aim to build a shared understanding of what the MVP should look like and what “good” means for that particular stage of the product. It’s about being aligned, realistic, and intentional from the beginning.

Development:

As the product takes shape, QA continues to support both validation and verification. That includes:

• Planning and running tests, either manual or automated, depending on the context
• Raising issues early and contributing to continuous improvement
• Working toward zero critical bugs making it to production (*)
• Investigating root causes when things do go wrong, and helping the team learn from them
• Supporting technical and user documentation when needed

(*) We aim to avoid critical bugs reaching production, knowing that while perfection isn’t always possible, a strong QA process significantly reduces that risk.

Maintenance:

Once the product is live, QA doesn’t just step away. We stay involved to help interpret user feedback, maintain regular communication with the client, and keep improving the product based on real-world usage.

And throughout all of these stages, there’s something else that’s always happening in the background. We’re helping everyone involved (PMs, designers, developers) think about quality from their perspective. It’s a shared responsibility, and we try to make it part of the culture, not just a checklist.

Integrating HIPAA & non-functional requirements into the QA Process

Now, in healthcare, quality isn’t just about whether the product works well. It’s also about meeting critical regulatory requirements. One of the most important for us is HIPAA.

For any project that involves PHI (Protected Health Information), we make sure everything we do is aligned with HIPAA’s Privacy and Security Rules. That means more than just contracts, although we do sign BAAs with our vendors and clients. 

We’ve developed a set of test cases aligned with key HIPAA requirements to help us validate that security and privacy safeguards are in place. These tests are part of our QA process in projects that handle protected health information, and we run them in secure cloud environments that support HIPAA compliance, such as AWS with a signed BAA. Our test suite is structured around both the HIPAA Security and Privacy Rules, and covers common scenarios such as encryption, session management, access controls, consent handling, and error messaging in sensitive flows. The goal is to catch potential issues early and apply HIPAA principles consistently across projects. It’s not about ticking boxes, it’s about building safer, more trustworthy healthcare products from the ground up.

Beyond HIPAA, we also keep an eye on other non-functional aspects of quality that matter a lot in healthcare:

• Performance: We ensure the system is prepared to handle the expected load, user concurrency, and response times without compromising stability.
• Usability: We collaborate closely with UX designers to deliver an intuitive and seamless experience.
• Accessibility: We make sure platforms meet standards like WCAG or Section 508, so that everyone, regardless of ability, can access and use the product confidently.

Putting Theory into Practice

All of this sounds great in theory, but what really matters is how it plays out in real projects. Two recent examples show how bringing QA in early and keeping it involved throughout can make a real difference.

With Mavida Health, we helped build a digital mental health platform that supports women throughout the maternity journey. It’s a complex product that combines clinical care, educational content, community interaction, and smart tools for managing mental health. From day one, QA played a key role in making sure the platform was reliable, secure, and truly user-friendly. For example, we carefully validated critical onboarding flows to ensure every type of user could register and be correctly routed through the system. We also worked on ensuring a consistent and polished experience across iOS and Android, catching and leveling subtle differences in behavior and UI.

Beyond testing, QA also contributed to product scalability, helping the team break down complex features into smaller, testable increments, which led to smoother and more predictable releases. 

Even after launch, our QA team stayed involved. We supported production monitoring by analyzing the root causes of reported issues and working closely with the client and the PM to prioritize what really matters. This helped ensure each sprint had a well-aligned scope, the budget was used efficiently, and the team could focus on delivering the highest-impact improvements.

Then there’s the Oxford Mindfulness App, built to make evidence-based mindfulness practices accessible worldwide. With a tight timeline and specialized accessibility needs, the QA team helped prioritize and validate essential features, including those designed for users with visual sensitivity. A big part of our work there was making sure the experience was consistent across devices and screen sizes, even under the pressure of a fast-paced release. QA also played a crucial role in integration testing, particularly around subscription flows and in-app purchases. Verifying that everything worked correctly in different environments and marketplaces was key to supporting the app’s revenue cycle and ensuring a seamless experience for users who chose to upgrade.

We were also heavily involved in validating the content within the app, making sure all the necessary text, images, and resources were in place, aligned with the user journey, and requesting anything missing from the client when needed. It wasn’t just about functionality, but about ensuring that the final product reflected the care and quality the client envisioned.

Building a Quality-First Culture in a World Shaped by AI

We believe that quality doesn’t come from one department alone; it comes from how the entire team thinks, works, and collaborates. That’s why we’ve invested time and effort into building a strong culture of quality across the company.

One way we do that is through regular training sessions. We cover everything from testing techniques and QA trends to healthcare-specific knowledge and compliance. These sessions aren’t just for QA professionals. Designers, developers, PMs, everyone is welcome. Because the more each person understands about quality, the better we work together. Over time, this shared mindset leads to stronger products, fewer surprises, and better long-term partnerships with our clients.

And while staying grounded in the fundamentals is key, we’re also actively exploring how new technologies (especially AI) can support our QA efforts. AI is clearly reshaping the way we build and test software. In our case, it’s helping with things like test generation, analyzing documentation, and predicting issues earlier in the process. But we never lose sight of the big picture.

In healthcare, data sensitivity and patient safety come first. That’s why we use AI responsibly, always keeping human oversight in the loop and making sure we meet the highest ethical standards. We’re also developing specific heuristics and strategies for testing AI-driven tools like virtual assistants, which don’t behave in deterministic ways and require a different approach.

For us, AI is not about replacing the basics, it’s about enhancing them. When combined with a well-trained, quality-driven team, it becomes a powerful tool that amplifies what we already do well.

Final Thoughts

In healthcare, quality isn’t a nice-to-have; it’s non-negotiable. At Light-it, we take that seriously. Whether we’re shaping an MVP during discovery, refining a product during development, or supporting it after launch, our goal stays the same: to build software that’s not only functional but genuinely useful, safe, and aligned with the needs of patients and professionals.

Quality is something we build into every step of the process. It helps us deliver better outcomes, reduce risk, and earn the trust of the people who use what we create.

Want to know more? Listen to Alan, our CEO and his take on QA in healthcare: Quality Sense Podcast: Alan Brande - Testing in Healthcare,

If you’re working on a digital health product and want to make quality a central part of your strategy, we’d love to chat.