In healthcare, a defect can affect someone’s health, so teams need to consider what happens when software fails. The speaker contrasts this with a game that fails to save, where the consequences are usually limited to frustration. Applications should behave as designed across devices, operating systems, locations, and edge cases.
Challenges and considerations of building medical devices using React Native
An unnamed Callstack speaker discusses the risks, testing demands, performance, and technology choices involved in building medical applications with React Native, in conversation with an unnamed host.
The speaker emphasizes testing and assurance across repeated fixes and releases. Teams should review code and inspect library changes before upgrading, then choose automated tests based on the change. Physical devices add variation: BLE and NFC devices behave differently, and new iOS releases can introduce uncertainty.
Testing also needs to cover performance across an app’s many dependencies and its own code. The speaker says React Native can handle many applications, including streaming data and graphs, and that teams can add native components or use C when needed. For a Class III device where nanosecond timing could affect a heartbeat, the speaker suggests React may not be the right choice.
The speaker says React Native was harder to adopt in 2017, when it had only about five years of history, but is now used by many companies. For any technology, teams should assess community support, prototype before committing to a long project, ask developers for feedback, and compare performance against their needs. The choice should start with the problem to solve, not recommendations made for someone else’s use case.
Takeaways
- Assess the possible harm from software failure before deciding how much assurance a feature needs.
- Review dependency changes and automate tests that match the scope of each update.
- Test across the actual phones, operating systems, and connected devices your application must support.
- Choose performance requirements based on clinical consequences and user experience.
- Prototype unfamiliar technology and check its community support before committing to a long project.
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What was claimed 4
- featureTest automation: Automates checks for software changes and dependencies.
“There's a big emphasis on test automation.”
YouTube Unverified1 source· Talk
- featureReact Native: The speaker says it provides sufficient performance for most applications and supports adding native components when needed.
“in most cases with React Native, you get the right performance”
YouTube Unverified1 source· Talk
- featureReact Native: The speaker says a native component can be built for functionality that does not perform as expected, with C available if needed.
“you can build a native component for them”
YouTube Unverified1 source· Talk
- featurehybrid search: The host says this setup can lead to performance issues and app complexity.
“Because of the complexity, they run into performance issues.”
YouTube Unverified1 source· Talk
