Strategies for reducing technical debt
There are two critical steps for technical debt reduction. First, companies must isolate the debt into modular, digestible chunks and then, within each module, plan a progressive takeover of one implementation by another in a manner that is seamless to external systems. For the first step, IT leaders need to locate the system or module that is doing more than it’s designed to do and, therefore, doing it poorly. If it is not yet isolated, the software implementation needs to be arranged so that it can be. Then, for the second step, there must be a gradual plan in place to replace the module that, critically, doesn’t plan on a hot swap.

Health plans looking to modernize their payment integrity processes, for example, should do so via a safe migration strategy through a process of gradual transition. Health plans should implement a fix that wraps around a primary system that’s creating technical debt, learns how a module in the primary system is performing and, once confident, starts to offer an alternative method to correct the primary system. An iterative test-and-expand process can then be used to progressively shift more and more responsibility to the new system to create a centralized, modernized, automated, and band-aid-free technology stack.
As new technologies like AI and automation continue to play a bigger role in healthcare processes, companies will need to be proactive about staying up to date with solutions that allow them to operate as effectively as possible. The ones who don’t will fall behind and, as technical debt continues to compound, struggle to catch up.

About the author: Prasanna Ganesan is the founder and CEO of Machinify, the trusted AI partner for healthcare admin.

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