Developing tele-health mobile application for a US-based healthcare tech firm

Team Daffodil, on understanding the app requirements proposed a development roadmap to VivoDoc. This included recommendations for a cloud architecture (with the most relevant managed cloud services), technology stack, third-party integrations, security factors and compliances, best development practices for faster time-to-market, and some must-haves that could give an edge to their app idea.  

Using React Native, Angular, and NodeJS as core technologies, developed a mobile and web application that aims to reduce the patient-physician appointment booking time. The web and mobile applications were developed with 4 user roles such as Patient (Mobile & Web), Physician (Mobile & Web), Admin (Web), and Super Admin (Web).

VivoDoc for Patients: The app allows patients to check the physicians in the vicinity, their available time-slots for an appointment, and book them online. The solution help patients to make informed choices with verified reviews by other patients and schedule appointments either in-person or through a video call (with a multi-specialty consultation facility).

VivoDoc for Physicians/Providers: The app allows physicians/providers to get onboarded with multiple practices and meet potential patients looking for their services, thereby increasing the efficiency of their practices.

VivoDoc Admin/Super Admin Role: The admin and super admin (depending upon the permissions) can have a bird’ eye view of the practices on the platform. This includes the number of bookings through VivoDoc, count of practices onboarded, number of providers, type of subscription plans, etc.

Development Highlights: 

• Modular Architecture: The application codebase was expected to become complex as the development progressed. To maintain scalability and fault isolation, a modular architecture was adopted. By dividing the application into independently deployable, small-sized modules, the complexity of the codebase was reduced. Moreover, executing changes to small, independent modules offer space for frequent updates in the app. 
• Security Compliance: The application stores sensitive patient health information (PHI) and thus to protect the data from any unauthorized use, the HIPAA compliance rules were followed.
• EHR Integration: To help physicians/providers maintain an electronic record of the patients and ensure interoperability of this data, the software was integrated with third-party EHR platforms (Athena Health and Dr. Chrono). Team Daffodil overcame the challenges associated with this integration, including complex onboarding process, trouble with API integrations, practice & provider level synchronization in both the EHR platforms.

• Powerful Search Engine: The search engine in the application is powered by a search & analytics engine, wherein, a number of permutations & combinations were applied to offer the most relevant output to the patients. It was ensured that irrespective of the load on the search engine, accurate and quick results are offered to the users.
• Visibility of Available Slots: Team Daffodil used the cache mechanism to ensure that the patients are able to check the recently updated slot of the physician.
• Insurance Verification: Patients are provided with the option to check their insurance compatibility with the physician or the provider at the time of booking. This is done using a third-party service at the backend so that patients are ascertained that the insurance supports the selected physician/provider.
• Payment to Practitioner: Team Daffodil did thorough research to figure out a payment solution where the payment is directly done to the physician or the provider’s account. For this, the Express service by Stripe was utilized.
• Cloud Infrastructure: The entire infrastructure of the application is hosted on the cloud. Team Daffodil utilized the best of cloud services for improved application performance.
  
  One of the prime advantages of using cloud services in this healthcare project was HIPAA-aligned workload. The workload contained various recommended security configurations related to role-based access control, data protection and retention, audit logging, monitoring, etc.