The App Genesis: An Age-old Medical Industry’s Challenge
The Outpatient Department of any hospital is the one that is filled with instances of chaos and physician burnout stories. The app was conceived on the idea of finding a digital solution to the issue.
The medical industry, on a global scale is suffering from growing instances of physician burnout specially in the OPD. Led by issues like massive paperwork, lack of real-time electronic health records, and an improper walk-in system, hospitals find it difficult to manage patients who come in seeking preventive, diagnostic, curative, and rehabilitative care.
The online doctor appointment app founders came to us with several statistics and reports on how an app that connects doctors with patients can eliminate 70% of the chaotic situation in every OPD. They believed that by virtually connecting patients with doctors, physician burnouts will lower and the patient experience will improve.
How We Fit into the Vision
When we were contacted for helping with the technical side of the on-demand doctor appointment application development, we took on the role of an extended team of digital solution providers.
The Timeline for Medical Care Innovation
We incorporated a mix of creativity and technical expertise in the development cycle, keeping the requested delivery timeline of 3 months in focus.
analysis and
prototype
design
and QA
and UAT
Stepping into Patient’s Shoes to Give
Them an Experience They Deserve
We kicked off the project by drawing a user persona diagram of the app users - what would motivate them to use the app and the features they will most interact with. An insight that then shaped the complete development cycle.
Jane Doe
Age: 36 years
Job: Architech
Location: London
Goal
Frustrations
Lack of specialists in her area.- Expensive appointments for a
- preventive consultation. Long wait time during walk-in appointments.
- Absence of a safe platform to keep all the medical records.
Defining the Users Movements In-app
Adding Convenience &
Seamlessness in Every Click
Instilling a feeling of confidence in a situation where the patients are worried about their health is what we focused on offering through the design structure.
Our design system was based on making it easy for patients to find doctors and connect with them in a headspace where they are anxious about their health. On the other hand, we wanted to make it easy for doctors to use the application in their everyday routine. We ensured that we keep a minimalist structure in both content and icons, in a way that it is easy for users to move in the app organically without facing a learning curve.
Our team of designers worked alongside the development team to ensure that the design vision was practical on the coding front and wouldn’t lead to any confusion or unnecessary steps. The shared end goal for us was to give a seamless experience to the patients.
Development Methodology Shaping
Patient Experience Success
We integrated the on-demand doctor appointment app with the best technology and a future-focused user experience.
When we initiated the development part of the application, it was clear that we had to focus on both doctors and patient-centric interface and experience. So every feature, technology that we chose was around the idea that the app should be robust, high concurrency friendly, and extremely easy to use.
While the development process was fairly straightforward, there were 2 critical challenges that we faced:- Ensuring the features and app working met the HIPAA, HL7, and other compliances
- In the doctor's version of the application, it was critical that they could manage virtual sessions under different network conditions.
We solved the compliance readiness issue by tweaking the features and having a secure data storage practice. Our developers made a note of mentioning how the data was getting used clearly to the patients and then ensured there was no loophole in the architecture for hackers to access the data.
As for the second part of the challenge, we relied on video and chat APIs that are known to function in a glitch-free way under multiple network conditions. This way, the doctors were able to connect with patients in real-time.
The Outcome of Our
Dedicated Efforts
Our team successfully completed the version 1 of the on-demand doctor appointment app within the stipulated time of 3 months. At present, we are working on expanding the feature sets of the application to online pharmacy and lab test booking.
Mr. John Smith
