How we rebuilt a robust appointment management solution for a US-based telehealth platform without disrupting care management.
Project Scope
To craft an appointment scheduling solution and modernize the telehealth application for patients and providers.
Duration:
Current Status:
Project closed with 100% client satisfaction
Team:
1 Product Manager,
1 Product Designer,
1 Developer,
1 Engineering Manager,
1 Principal Designer
Introduction
QCare Plus provides a community-focused care management solution aimed at revolutionizing PrEP (pre-exposure prophylaxis) access and fostering stigma-free healthcare through community partnership and technology for vulnerable communities. This once-a-day pill – PrEP, is available after prescription and reduces the risk of HIV by 99%. The company offers patient assistance programs, online doctor visits, at-home lab testing, and discreet prescription delivery, thereby helping individuals receive PrEP in a quick, easy, and affordable manner.
How Digicorp Partnered with QCare Plus?
QCare Plus wanted to rebuild and modernize its telehealth application. They were looking to collaborate with a technology partner who had experience and expertise in the digital health space. They needed a team that had hands-on expertise with technologies such as MVC-designed programming, LAMP stack, SQL, REST API, and HTML 5/CSS.
Digicorp understood the problem areas and their requirements. Accordingly, we introduced QCare Plus with our agile approach that would ensure quality development, quicker fixes, room for iteration, better risk management, and effective cross-functional collaboration. We advised them that certain technical changes were necessary to make their telehealth platform more intuitive. After considering the suggestions, we mutually agreed on the proposal.
Challenges
QCare Plus was used by over 2000 users. These users engaged with the application to consult a specialist or to access PrEP. However, users faced some significant roadblocks with the application.
One such aspect that proved to be a hurdle for users was unintuitiveness when scheduling an appointment with the provider. The Scheduler functionality was outdated, lacked a modern style, and proved to be a problem for both patients and providers. For patients – when they wanted to schedule an appointment with the provider, it lacked convenience and necessary features. For providers – it lacked intuitiveness and functional prowess due to which providers could not navigate their schedules smoothly. Above all, the entire appointment scheduling process was time-consuming for both patients as well as providers.
Due to these persistent problems, there was a need to overhaul some and introduce a few new features into the existing system. However, the challenge was not to disrupt the existing user journey for over 2000 platform users. Digicorp decided to pull up its socks and devised a well-planned agile strategy to make the platform more intuitive, easy to use, and functionally proficient.
Digicorp's Solution and the Strategic Approach
The team at Digicorp started with extensive research to understand the patient and provider pain points. We dived deep into the technological impediments and devised a holistic approach to synthesize a new and advanced version of the scheduler for both patients and providers.
For Patients:
QCare Plus wanted to make virtual checkups possible for everyone, thus creating an inclusive telehealth environment. For this reason, the ease of scheduling appointments was a must. It was not the case back then. To ensure that patients find it easy to do so, Digicorp created simple steps inside the web app to help patients add the required information and book appointments easily. The information that was captured included their demographics, insurance information (though PrEP was available regardless of patients having insurance), and their disease history. Adhering to the stringent PHI (Patient Health Information) privacy standards of HIPAA compliance, this information was kept private and used only for diagnostic purposes.
These steps ensured that the patients could easily browse through the scheduling features and book a consultation with the providers in a mutually convenient way.
For Providers:
Providers associated with QCare Plus had limited time. Since multiple patients submitted their comprehensive information for consultations, the right management of their schedule was quintessential. We brainstormed and crafted a dedicated dashboard for providers so that they can view and manage patients’ appointments quickly and easily. Providers’ dashboards were dynamic, meaning they could view the booked appointments as well as patient information on their system. These dashboards were highly personalized so that they could assess everything on one screen viz. patient details, patient history, and appointments.
We helped QCare Plus craft an intuitive appointment management functionality by reforming these necessary functionalities for patients and providers. Our extensive UI-UX research helped them simplify the patient and provider journey and improve the overall user experience multifold.
Technologies and Tools Deployed
The key technologies and frameworks that we used for product development were Slim Framework and MySQL. The design environment used for the UI & UX Design were HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and the UI design library Propeller. Additionally, we used AWS as our hosting infrastructure.
Slim Framework
MySQL
Visual Studio Code
Bootstrap 4
Propeller
AWS
Digicorp's Value Addition and the Project Impact
QCare Plus’s partnership with Digicorp was not just a client-vendor relationship, we acted like a partner. Within just two months, Digicorp delivered a significant update for the QCare Plus application by enhancing and modernizing the UI-UX. In the next few weeks, we built vital scheduler features. These enhanced functionalities ensured improved convenience for the providers and uninterrupted patient engagement.
Conclusion: Reinventing Care Delivery
Through this collaborative partnership, Digicorp helped QCare Plus overcome its technological constraints, building a more inclusive and efficient healthcare platform. The synergy between innovation and user-centricity amplified QCare Plus’s commitment to providing accessible, stigma-free care to diverse communities across the United States.