Healthfully
An all-in-one enterprise healthcare solution
Learn how we developed an enterprise healthcare system to digitize processes for healthcare providers and consumers
40+ people
2015 – present
California, USA
and are purely for illustrative purposes.
About the client
Healthfully is a California-based startup that offers a multiplatform healthcare solution to meet the needs of all hospital stakeholders. The platform digitizes processes from C-level decision-making to routine processes of all medical specialists, non-medical hospital personnel, laboratory staff, and healthcare consumers.
Benefits of Healthfully
Telehealth solution
Scheduling and payments
Collaboration and messaging
Caregiver, family, and peer support
Health programs
Incentives and rewards
Health and social communities
Remote monitoring and device integration
Business challenges
The Healthfully team faced three key business challenges.
Find a reliable software vendor who:
had healthcare industry expertise
was capable of architecturing cost-efficient software solutions
could build an enterprise-level multiplatform healthcare system.
Enhance the experience for existing clients by responding to emerging requirements and requests for new functionality.
Onboard new healthcare organizations.
Product scope
In creating their app, Healthfully wanted to accomplish two goals.
Build a holistic solution that
enabled most healthcare jobs to be done from a single app
captured the patient data required to perform Value-Based Care and Population Health Management
integrated with existing EHR, PMS, and HIS systems
curated service destinations and influenced downstream decisions and referrals.
Create a caregiving community through the platform that includes different circles of care, containing:
patients
healthcare providers
caregivers (family, nurses, guardians, etc.)
Project details
Product discovery
To ensure the scope of the project was aligned with business values, we divided the discovery phase into three stages:
Analysis. Define business requirements, determine the product’s market positioning, analyze the product architecture, and elicit the best technical solutions.
Design. Create a product vision and roadmap and build an architectural design in line with business goals.
Requirements. Formalize the product vision into the project scope for the development team and perform initial project setup.
Managing several groups of stakeholders
This project requires us to work with different groups of stakeholders who contribute to the project backlog:
Healthfully (product owners)
Healthfully’s clients (clinics and their patients, who are the main source of end user feedback)
Third-party integrations providers (one of the sources for technical requirements)
To align the processing of stakeholders’ input, we:
developed a stakeholder management strategy to balance expectations of different groups of external stakeholders and ensure all their functionality requests were properly prioritized and delivered
rebuilt the technical workflow in line with our stakeholder management framework, which involved implementing a CI/CD pipeline and implementing a GitFlow branching mode
adjusted project delivery to the stakeholders’ management framework once Healthfully got new clients.
Ensure secure data sharing between system modules
We needed to integrate with some poorly documented legacy systems. Our task was to ensure system integrity regardless of the technologies. The integrations we implemented included:
an EHR system
an HL7 messages interface
a telemedicine solution
an appointments scheduling solution
a payment system
WebRTC solutions
new cloud infrastructure (integrated with existing on-premises infrastructure)
HIPAA compliance and product security
We ensured HIPAA compliance by:
limiting the scope of data visibility for sensitive PII/PHI data
securely sharing HL7 messages
logging activity with regular long-term cold storage backups and strict access limits to sensitive information
implementing AWS as a 100% HIPAA-compliant infrastructure provider
setting the session expiration time and regulating the number of devices that can be logged in to one account at a time.
We ensured product security with:
secure SSL-based connection protocols for exchanging data between users and the server
isolated database access that allows connections only from the internal network with role-based authentication
bruteforce application login detection and blocking of access for suspicious users
a strict password policy
suspicious activity detection and prevention
an encrypted communication layer (SSL)
role-based authentication and permissions management
cloud-based infrastructure.
Ensuring quick team scaling
During five years of our collaboration, there were several times when we had to quickly scale the project team. The last time, we had just a couple of weeks to scale the team from 12 to 30 people.
To ensure fast and smooth scaling, we
rebuilt the management structure and implemented partially independent domain pods for specific project units
embedded a new structure of technical leadership
assigned a dedicated resource manager who knew the project context
established an onboarding process that included learning the project documentation, workshops conducted by BAs and QAs, and mentoring by tech leads.
Developing a telehealth module from scratch in response to COVID-19
We were in the middle of building the core Healthfully functionality when the coronavirus outbreak started. In addition to the ongoing core development, the client asked us to create urgent virtual visit functionality to enable remote doctor appointments.
We managed to build live health video chat functionality within two weeks that effectively replaced many in-office visits during the pandemic. We made the virtual visit functionality capable of being integrated with any enterprise master patient index or third-party enterprise risk management system.
Simple UX for a complex product
Due to healthcare specifics, we had to make complex functionality clear, intuitive, and user-friendly for non-techies, people with disabilities, and different age groups. The Healthfully app includes many user roles, and we made the UX comfortable for all users by
building a consistent information architecture that’s scalable enough to allow for future implementations
adapting the design to the needs of users in different age groups
making the system convenient for people with disabilities
ensuring outdoor usability and accessibility.
Business process management for digitizing a workflow
Our client asked us to digitize the process by which care coordinators create patient referrals. The client provided us with their existing workflow as a starting point. As you can see in the diagram below, it was full of manual work, clarifications, and calls.
This was ineffective and time-consuming. Our task was to analyze the current workflow and add functionality that would significantly decrease the process complexity.
To digitize the referral process, we created models to visualize the future state and to model the sequence of events and the flow of information. Together with our business analyst, we designed and developed the corresponding functionality.
As a result, if eligibility rules are set up, the system automatically checks a patient’s eligibility for social services with no human involvement. Now, the process of referring a patient takes minutes instead of the hour or so that it took before.
Value delivered
As a result of the functionality provided by Yalantis, Healthfully was able to expand its user base with several large organizations both public and private.
All of a sudden, not only health systems are interested in having access to our app but employers and universities as well. Our phone is ringing all the time with people asking us to present our solution. It’s something that is really needed by employers.
Thanks to the results of our collaboration, Healthfully and its partners are currently
having discussions with charity foundations to, among other things, help psychologically traumatized people get back to normal life through online doctor visits
looking to globalize the structure we created to enable people to access the services of all agencies in their communities
partnering with social health organizations to help people stay well and live better lives
exploring new ways to evolve the platform by making use of smart devices like Apple Watch, Fitbit, and wireless scales to better manage and improve people’s overall wellness.
We’re literally saving people’s lives, getting people back to work, educated, and back to college. The influence that this solution can have on the world is incredible.