Qured is a British tech healthcare company that provides businesses in GB with a unique platform: pass health tests and receive doctor’s consultations via the mobile application. The APP Solutions is helping to create Qured, a product characterized as “healthcare in your pocket.”
Let’s have a brief look at some important facts about this project.
Qured is an intelligent healthcare solution in Great Britain designed to keep company employees in GB healthy instead of treating them when they’re ill. Qured has built the first proactive, preventative healthcare platform that engages the whole company personnel on a journey to better health. The main components of this healthcare platform include:
Personalized testing with the help of application: Each member’s testing plan is personalized based on their health profile, family medical history, and individual risk factors.
Truly pain-free blood collection during testing: Qured provides users with a groundbreaking blood collection device that uses microneedles thinner than an eyelash, taking all the pain and mess out of home testing and removing barriers to uptake.
Clinician-led results and referrals: Test results, insights, and advice are delivered by Qured clinicians during private video consultations. They offer clinical support and refer to onward care when necessary.
Workforce health analytics: Qured secure employer portal provides an anonymized overview of the team’s health, test usage, and results, helping the target company’s investment into wellbeing, reducing costs from major illnesses, and improving retention metrics.
The core functionality of the Qured app is to help businesses take care of their employees by providing them with preventive healthcare options. There is a mobile application for customers. It includes the following features:
Create personal profile and pass the Onboarding Stage.
Book 1st test via the app for the desirable date and time slot.
Receive the special device kit (with its help, the user can take the health test at home).
Make a video consultation with Health Advisor via the app and take the test home.
Scan the unique QR code that includes the patient details and send them to the medical laboratory.
Track the status of the test kit the user sent back to the lab.
Make a video consultation with General Practitioner via the app and receive his opinion and comments on test results.
Passes all the flow above with the following health tests.
The other elements of the platform are:
The Admin Panel that manages all the mentioned functionality by admins.
Health Advisors and General Practitioners use the Clinical Portal to conduct video consultations.
Dashboard with statistics provided to HR Managers of the companies that purchased this product so they can analyze the data and take action regarding their employees.
The product is already in production and is available for Customers to download on App Store and Play Market (Google): only GB region.
TAS team is working on the development and testing of the core functionality of the Qured mobile application, which means:
Creating new functionality and improving the existing features (for example, an unlimited re-brand of the application was performed by our team in December 2022).
Proposing technical solutions that can improve app functionality and involve more users.
Unique specific design implemented for the users of a different group and sex ranges following healthcare domain solution.
Testing on different real devices as well as emulators that can help to cover a device zoo that real customers use in production.
Qured helps businesses in Great Britain to take care of their employees as well as retain them within the companies.
The application provides an opportunity to pass medical tests and get a consultation with the help of several clicks in the mobile application. This is extremely important in our daily busy life and rapidly-flowing world.
For The APP Solutions company, it is an excellent experience in strengthening healthcare expertise and portfolio as well as making society healthier with the help of preventive medicine. We are developing a solution that is comfortable to use and cares for people’s health.
Digging deeper into the smallest details always brings valuable insights. The same is relevant for Genomics, an interdisciplinary field of biology that focuses on the structuring, functioning, evaluating, mapping, and editing of genomes. A genome is an organism’s complete set of DNA, including all of its genes.
The main challenge in modern Genomics is real-time Nanopore DNA sequencer Processing. Despite the availability of nanopore DNA sequence devices, which you can buy for around one thousand dollars, there was no relevant software that could analyze DNA samples in real-time.
At the same time, existing genomic analyses require DNA sample transportation to a centralized facility, sequencing, and analyzing samples in a batch process, which takes weeks and even months. Such a slow analysis process may cost lives, especially for patients with sepsis, for whom each hour of delay decreases chances to survive by 4%, and death can occur in 24-48 hours.
The backstory
Digging deeper into the smallest details always brings valuable insights. The same is relevant for Genomics, an interdisciplinary field of biology that focuses on the structuring, functioning, evaluating, mapping, and editing of genomes. A genome is an organism’s complete set of DNA, including all of its genes.
The main challenge in modern Genomics is real-time Nanopore DNA sequencer Processing. Despite the availability of nanopore DNA sequence devices, which you can buy for around one thousand dollars, there was no relevant software that could analyze DNA samples in real-time.
At the same time, existing genomic analyses require DNA sample transportation to a centralized facility, sequencing, and analyzing samples in a batch process, which takes weeks and even months. Such a slow analysis process may cost lives, especially for patients with sepsis, for whom each hour of delay decreases chances to survive by 4%, and death can occur in 24-48 hours.
It started out when Allen Day, a data scientist and senior developer advocate from Google Cloud Platform, was looking for a cloud architect with a GCP certificate. During the search, Allen got in touch with us. After he ensured that we had a certified GCP architect, (Allen has found only two developers with relevant experience), we started to clarify more of the project’s details.
Allen needed such a specialist for the Queensland University of Technology project. The project should combine Machine Learning capabilities, Google Cloud Platform tools for data analytics, and existing genomic datasets with streaming data analytics.
Initially, Allen needed just one professional from our team. But, with time, Allen appreciated our technological expertise, proactivity, and product mindset, which allowed us to extend the development team to 10 members.
What is real-time DNA sequence analysis application
The application analyses DNA nanopores in real-time. It detects taxonomical proportions, potential viruses, and pathologies, antibiotic resistant genes, etc. Then, the app visualizes the results received via the interactive Sunburst tool. Thanks to convenient and detailed data visualization, medical experts can make an informed decision on a patient treatment plan.
Nanopore DNA sequencing has numerous applications in the Healthcare and Agricultural industries:
Infection diagnosis from a blood sample and taxonomical counting
Monitoring, profiling, and tracking the evolution of antibiotic resistance genes
Pathogen detection in sewage or public health
Identification of viruses in cassava crops
How does it work
Blood and other DNA samples are collected from a portable nanopore sequencing device. We used a MinION device, developed by Oxford Nanopore Technologies. Then, the received data is sent to the platform and goes through the following workflow:
Ingestion – files are uploaded to the Google Cloud Platform and streamed into the processing pipeline
Base-calling stage – machine learning model infers DNA sequences from electrical signals
Alignment stage – via a DNA database, the samples are analyzed to find pathogen sequences, taxonomy enrichment, and other anomalies
Summarization stage – calculation of each pathogen’s percentage in the particular sample
Storage and visualization – the results are saved to Google Firestore DB and subsequently visualized in real-time with D3.js.
Project objectives
To develop an application for DNA nanopore sequencer analysis, we needed to go through the following steps.
Investigate Genomics domain data formats
Develop of a raw sequencer data simulator
Empower the app with a source data reading
Develop logic for the alignment stage
Develop flow for the summarization stage
Find relevant solutions and tools for analyzed data storage and visualization
Write documentation on how to use the application and make it available on GitHub
Our Challenges
During the development of the DNA nanopore sequencer application, we faced the following challenges:
Build scalable and reliable system architecture. Nanopore Sequencer DNA Analysis is a resource-demanding procedure. Due to the high volume of data and tight time constraints, the system needs to scale accordingly. We eliminated this challenge by leveraging Google Cloud Platform compute, storage, and data processing tools. Thanks to such an approach, we achieved a smooth, streamlined, and reliable scalability for data processing operations.
Data processing logic. The project required fine-tuned data processing operation for providing a broad scope of results in minimal time. Thus, we needed to develop a data processing logic that connects the analytics application to the cloud platform and guarantee an effective information turnover. To achieve this goal, we used the Apache Beam library that runs on Google Cloud Dataflow and supports integration with other Google Cloud services. We also integrated the Compute Engine to build the auto-scaling Alignment Cluster in the application.
DNA Analysis Tools integration. DNA Analysis tools for Nanopore sequencers were just desktop utilities, thus we needed to adjust them for cloud platforms. We also needed to integrate the desktop-based DNA analysis tools into a unified, scalable system. We reinterpreted the desktop-based DNA analysis tools for HTTP format and distributed them as web services so they could process large quantities of data in a shorter time span.
How we did it
System architecture
For the system architecture, we applied a bunch of Google Cloud Platform data processing tools, as well as compute capabilities. Data collected from a nanopore DNA sequencer becomes available in the New DNA read file and uploaded to a Cloud Storage bucket. Once all files are uploaded, they go through a workflow that converts the input files into actionable reports.
Machine learning engine
The application should include a machine learning algorithm that would analyze genetic engineering databases to come up with relevant DNA test results. For this goal, we applied a machine learning model on TensorFlow, previously trained with several genomic databases.
Server-side
We needed to create a server-side with web and mobile developers in mind. Thus, to store databases and files, we leveraged Firebase, a document-storage system that can represent hierarchical data, essential for representing biological taxonomies.
Client-side
Our primary concern was to shorten the time data is uploaded from the sequencer and visualized.
To keep things as fast as possible from the client-side, we implemented a dynamic dashboard with D3.js, which periodically polls a database for new data and updates the Sunburst chart visualization accordingly.
Our tech stack
Tech Stack:
JAPSA, a Java Package for Sequence Analysis.
TensorFlow, an open-source library for training an ML algorithm
Chiron Base Caller for translating raw nanopore signal
Samtools utilities for interacting with and post-processing short DNA sequence read alignments in the SAM, BAM and CRAM formats
BWA MEM algorithm for performing local alignment
Minimap2, a versatile sequence alignment program for aligning DNA or mRNA sequences against a large reference database.
Google Cloud tools:
Google Cloud Storage for storing and accessing data
Google Cloud PubSub for sending and receiving messages between application components at low latency with on-demand scalability
Google FireStore for storing, syncing, and querying data
Google Cloud Dataflow to simplify streaming data pipeline development with lower data latency
Apache Beam for defining and executing data processing workflows
D3 Data Visualization Library for producing dynamic, interactive data visualizations in web browsers
JavaScript for building Data Visualisation
Team composition
2 Data Engineers
1 DevOps Engineer
1 Web Developer
Result and prospects
We developed Nanopore DNA sequencers that significantly reduce the time it takes to generate DNA sequence data. Now, medical professionals and genomic engineers can receive sequence data generated from samples (the patient, sewage plant, or crop field) within a few minutes.
The potential for nanopore sequencing is promising. The real-time nanopore sequencing platform we developed has a significant impact on the molecular diagnosis of human disease, in particular, sepsis. Together with the Google Cloud Platform team, we created an open-source set of packages of nanopore sequencers available on GitHub.
This project was just the beginning of fruitful cooperation.
Once, Allen Day visited our office in Kyiv to run a Data Science meetup that was quite successful among data scientists and data engineers.
After a year of working with Allen and the GCP team, our CEO, Pavel Tantsiura visited Google’s office in Singapore to sign an official partnership with Google and The APP Solutions and discuss an upcoming project.
Currently, we are working with Allen on the PopGen project in the Genomics field aimed at processing populations of genomes. The project’s directories with rice and human genome samples are available on the GitHub repository.
Meet The Table is an online platform for business networking we developed for StepintoCity, a business accelerator of entrepreneurs and international companies based in New York.
The platform matches Guests – entrepreneurs from Korea who want to start their business and Hosts – New York-based service providers, such as distributors, financial services, marketing agencies, etc.
Both parties can discuss business opportunities in more detail at a virtual meeting table. Such a table includes a built-in calendar to schedule meetings and enables communication via video conferencing and text messaging with live translation to your native language.
The platform also includes City Mates – New York residents who bridge the language and culture gaps by coordinating communication between guests and hosts while advocating guests’ rights and needs.
Our challenge
Junhwan Paul Kang is CEO of the New York-based business accelerator StepintoCity, inc. The business accelerator includes over 30,000 Korean entrepreneurs who want to open a business in New York.
Junhwan Paul recognized that it is hard for Korean entrepreneurs to enter the U.S. market with their business due to several reasons. They are – lack of an online base of reliable service providers, cultural and language differences.
Junhwan Paul hired us to build a project that will combine a networking platform with matching functionality, a virtual solution for business events, and a job marketplace to face those challenges.
The client wanted the platform to support three user roles: guests, hosts, and city mates. For this project, we needed to develop three different user cabinets for three user roles. We also needed to provide users with networking opportunities via secure text messaging and video calls.
Our solution – Meet The Table, the online networking platform
Let’s take a look at the features we implemented for each of the three user cabinets.
Guest profile
The profile includes a guest’s personal information, contact details, and localization (time zone and language). Allows a guest to add a payment method and view the history of payments.
The Product section allows guests to place a request for services they need with a description of the work scope.
The Host catalog includes a list of service providers, the type of services they provide, the project’s duration, and the price for consultations.
The Citymate catalog allows the guest to select a city mate with relevant experience, service category, and availability.
My Booking allows the guest to schedule virtual meetings with hosts and citymates by selecting available time slots in their calendars.
Upcoming Meetings include virtual meetings accepted by both parties (the guest and host), information about the participants, and payment status.
The Inbox allows the guest to communicate with hosts and city mates via text messages with live translation by clicking on a message.
[The prototype of in-app message translation by The APP Solutions]
Video Calls allows the guest to join a visual meeting with the host and a city mate and exchange text messages in a built-in life chat with online translation.
Feedback enables the guest to share their experience with a host and a city mate by writing feedback and rating.
Host profile
The dashboard includes weekly, monthly, and annual booking statistics and their status (initiated bookings, progress, completed).
The profile includes a host’s personal information, contacts, specialization, and location, payment details (Stripe account), and setting of business hours when the host is available for a consultation.
The Guests Products section includes requests from guests, the type of service they are looking for, and a detailed description of the service to be provided.
Create Tables enables hosts to create new tables, add their description, and specify its price.
Tables include the history of services provided, their type, status, and the amount of payment received.
Booking includes all virtual meeting requests from guests.
Citymate profile
Profile with information about a detailed description of one’s specialization, provided services category, hourly rate, and a Review section with feedback from other platform users.
Booking includes a list of requests for virtual meetings from guests.
The Upcoming Meetings section includes virtual meetings accepted by hosts and their details.
Project details
The delivery of the project took us through the following steps:
Step 1. Discovery phase
To ensure the scope of the project was aligned with the client’s business needs, we divided the discovery phase into two stages:
Analysis of competitors
After we defined business requirements, we analyzed several job marketplaces, such as Fiverr, Freelancer, and TaskRabbit, and found some drawbacks in their functionality.
Fiverr does not protect sellers from unfair buyers. Buyers can request some extra work from sellers for free threatening to leave negative feedback. Also, buyers can cancel the project after it is done and get a refund. The chat is very buggy. Users do not receive clear explanations in case Fiverr deletes their user accounts.
The Freelancer platform has fraud issues when freelancers/employers must pay the security and may disappear after money is transferred. There are cases when employers pay for work done and later take money back from freelancer wallets by closing their accounts. There are issues with the synchronization of web and mobile apps. Users cannot connect to their accounts via web and mobile at the same time.
TaskRabbit allows service providers to cancel tasks at the last minute and cause issues for clients. Users have problems with the “forgot password” flow. The system takes a “one-time sign-up fee” from taskers, and as a result, many potential taskers refuse to register in the system.
Recommendations
After we learned about the competitors’ weaknesses, we made up a list of recommendations for the project’s functionality which we considered during the development:
We must avoid fraud from guests, hosts, and city mates. We need to validate hosts and city mates to ensure that they are reliable contra gentes. The system must not include any security payments and show guests that they should not perform direct costs.
We need to check all cases when guests request money back.
Rating of host or city mate should not significantly influence their possibility of being involved in service requests. In such cases, guests will not be able to request any extra work for free, threatening to put a low rating for host or city mate.
The payment system must be stable because issues with payment flow always harm the user experience.
We should avoid canceling the meeting at the last minute by any user. The system must block such requests or charge a fee.
Step 2. Project documentation phase
We created a product vision and roadmap and built an architectural design in line with business goals.
The project documentation consisted of several parts:
General description – we gave an overall vision of the project, explained prominent user roles, and the project’s primary business goals.
General functional and non-functional requirements – we clarified that functional requirement as “The system must send emails to Users in defined events.” We also determined the primary non-functional requirements as “The system must handle approximately 3000 users at the MVP (Minimum Viable Product) phase”.
Payment flow. To avoid issues and fraud with payments from both clients and service providers, we documented all scenarios in which the platform withdraws charges and sends them to hosts and city mates. Based on those scenarios, we wrote a detailed payment flow for the project.
As a payment solution, we decided to use Stripe, a third-party payment gateway that includes high-end security. Using existing payment solutions is much cheaper than developing a payment gateway from scratch.
MVP scope. We start working on most new projects by developing a Minimum Viable Product (MVP), and this project wasn’t an exception. Before defining the MVP scope, we wrote user stories for three types of users (actors). Then, we isolated MVP user stories for the Meet The Table app’s core from the rest of the project scope to be implemented during the second development phase.
Step 3. Product development phase
With a formalized product vision in Technical documentation and the MVP project scope for the development team, we arranged a Kickoff meeting with stakeholders from Step into City and performed the initial project setup.
The development phase took us through the following tasks:
Design creation
Since Meet The Table includes three user roles, we made the UX convenient and clear by adding only the necessary functionality to each user profile type. We also used a navigation tab on the header available on any page for quick access to essential information. In a nutshell, we did the app’s design in the following ways:
Mockups. We made several mockups of the approximate layouts of main pages and user flow, described in the project’s tech documentation. As the main color scheme, we used yellow and gray, previously agreed with the project stakeholders.
Prototype. We added more elements, such as widgets and buttons, to the initial mockups. We combined ready screens into a clickable prototype, which we also agreed with project stakeholders.
Polished the design. Once we agreed on all the pages and their elements with the StepintoCity team, we polished the design with minor changes. Then, the front end developers implemented all the necessary functionality.
Backend development
While part of our team worked on the platform’s design, the backend developers did the following tasks:
Code refactoring. We decided to use an existing marketplace code as a core backend. So we needed to do a code refactoring at the initial stage of the backend development phase.
Code refactoring is a process used in the DevOps software development approach that involves editing and cleaning up previously written code without changing the code’s function. The essential purpose of code refactoring is to make the code more efficient and maintainable.
The developers performed code refactoring by getting rid of switch statements, making conditionals descriptive, and eliminating code duplication.
Data storage. We integrated cloud data storage into this project. As a cloud storage solution, we used Google Cloud Platform since it ensures the necessary data storage level and scalability in real-time, thus, ensures main non-functional requirements, i.e., handling over 30,000 users during the MVP phase.
Calculation logic. We developed the price calculation algorithm that calculates the platform’s revenue and revenues for host and city mate received from guests.
Feature implementation. As the tasks backlog, developers used the functionality described in the MVP project scope and user stories from the tech documentation. Developers spend from one to two weeks of coding to implement one user story, based on its complexity. As soon as a user story was implemented, QA managers tested the ready-made functionality and returned them to fix errors.
Project Tech Details
Backend: Node JS
Frontend: React JS, jQuery
Database: MongoDB
Cloud Storage: Google Cloud Platform
[Meet The Table architecture diagram]
Third-party software integration with API
We decided to use existing solutions for some of the project’s functions. Right after the project core functionality was ready, we integrated the following REST APIs:
Stripe for online payments
Twilio for online text messages
Socket.io for real-time bi-directional communication between the web client and server
Google Translate for multi-language online chat
WebRTC for online streaming and video calls
Team composition
1 Designer
2 Frontend Developers
3 Backend Developers
2 QA Managers
1 Business Analysts
1 Project Manager
Value delivered
The Meet The Table platform was developed as a networking tool that ensures secure and fraud-tolerant cooperation of U.S. based service providers, New York residents, and Korean entrepreneurs. You can check out the project by visiting the official Meet The Table website.
When we created Meet The Table, we focused on making the project to complement Stepinto City’s value proposition as a company to make it easier for global entrepreneurs and companies outside of the U.S. to open their business in New York.
To see more results of our work, visit our Portfolio.
Need to develop a business events platform? We'll help you to make a secured job marketplace with video streaming
If a doctor prescribes you medication, you need to take it regularly to feel better. For this purpose, you can use one of the existing mHealth applications. Most healthcare apps are targeted at people with chronic conditions, have an inconvenient user interface, and many ads that distract users.
Moreover, to report adverse reactions to your doctor, you need to assign a new appointment, which takes time and money.
The mHealth application we developed for our client will help users keep track of their medicinal consumption. Another of the app’s functions is to provide users with a community of people and articles to answer health-related questions that they might have.
How does mHealth app work?
It allows users to create a list with personal medication, log symptoms, and keep prescriptions in one place. The app sends reminders to the phone and always tells users the exact time they need to take medicine.
Users may also specify certain medications as “emergency”, which must be taken in extreme situations. The app provides users with quick access to the Emergency screen with information about medicine and doctor’s contacts.
Users can monitor their own health and create profiles of their family members.
The community feature provides users with access to articles & opinions to clarify issues that they might be facing with one or other medication.
Client requirements
Client wanted to create a medical & non-medical adherence and community app that is targeted for women between the ages of 25-40, but open to all.
The app had to become a digital friend for managing medication adherence, developing routines, and nurturing health-related curiosities.
Our solution
For this particular case, we suggested she participate in the Inception phase, our service that shapes the project vision and its roadmap. But, for the rest of our clients, we suggest moving with MVP.
Our challenges
A team to develop the product roadmap from scratch. For this task, we followed such requirements:
Find the ultimate database of medications available across the European market.
Make the product compliant with existing digital product regulations in the European Union (GDPR and PIPEDA).
Create UI/UX design. The product should have a custom design tailored to the target audience and a convenient interface.
The Inception phase took us through the following steps:
Step 1. Market research
Before designing the project documentation, we conducted market research in the search for potential competitors. It turns out that app has three main competitors – CareZone, Dosecast, Mango Health apps.
Then, we made up a table with their main drawbacks:
CareZone has too many ads, an outdated list of medications, and an inconvenient user interface.
Dosecast offers users a database of drugs available only in the U.S., device synchronization issues, and no ability to set different tones for different medicines.
Mango Health application has a UX which is too tricky to navigate and cannot log medication intake before reminder.
We also analyzed what color scheme and layouts competitors use to create a custom design for the project.
Competitor analysis also gave us insights into the monetization strategy to suggest the feature list and user stories. With this information at hand, we began to create project documentation.
Step 2. Project documentation
The project documentation performs as an instruction for developers and gives them an idea of what product they are about to develop. We developed the documentation for the main project parts are a mobile application, the Admin Panel, and a marketing landing page.
The project documentation starts with the following elements:
General Functional Requirements
In this section, we highlighted the main requirements for the project, i.e., what the system must and mustn’t do, such as:
The User must access the same account created in the app from multiple devices with the installed app.
The app should ask the User to update time once the User switches the time zone.
The application must have both offline and offline modes. In the offline mode, the User must have access to Home, Emergency, Stories, and Symptoms screens.
Non-functional Requirements
Non-functional requirements explain how the app should work. Our general non-functional requirements are the following:
Applications must support three languages: English, French, German.
The backend must handle increasing traffic loads – from 40,000 users for the first year to 200,000 users for the third year after the project launch.
Once we were done with the project’s general requirements, our solution architect, project manager, and business analyst started mapping up the project architecture and listing third-party solutions to apply.
App structure
App structure helped us map up features and user flow in the app before writing use cases. The app structure is the very first text-based wireframes for the project. Thanks to the app structure, we placed the User into the app’s flow and determined whether a conceptual framework agrees with the target audience and its needs.
The diagram below shows the action flow the User must take for completing a particular task.
Project architecture
We decided to begin with a monolith web-application containing most of the features to simplify initial development and split it into microservices over time.
For this project, we suggested the Google Cloud Platform as a cloud environment. GCP provides many built-in tools for developing the app’s architecture and the ability to move architecture to other environments without significant changes.
Since data synchronization was one of the competitor’s weak points, we decided to power up the project with the Kubernetes platform and Docker containers. Both solutions synchronize data in real-time and ensure the system’s scalability and portability.
Then, we drew up a scheme of the project architecture’s main components:
The Admin Panel for managing users and tracking statistics, connected with the app via Admin API
A mobile app retrieves and stores user info via Client API
Global Load Balancer HTTPS ensures cross-region load balancing. i.e., distributes backend tasks over a set of resources, making their overall processing more efficient.
CDN (Content Distribution Network) caches HTTP(S) load balanced content in users region through Google’s globally distributed edge points; thus, delivers the content without downtime.
Kubernetes cluster runs containerized web applications for authentication, authorization, and User management via API.
CloudSQL database is a solution for storing encrypted user data and relational databases for application statistics.
Cloud Storage is a hosting server for storing files that are not sensitive data.
Cloud Build is a tool for the continuous development of Docker images.
Container Registry is a GCP component for storing Docker container images.
Stackdriver is also a GCP component. It ensures operational logs, monitoring dashboards, and alerting to email and SMS.
Integrations
Chino.io is our solution of choice for ensuring GDPR and HIPAA compliance because it is ISO 13485 and 27001 certified. The platform encrypts data with secure record level encryption and sends it to the server via API calls. This integration also significantly reduces the development time and costs.
Drugbank API is an ultimate database of medications that includes all drugs available across the E.U. The database also contains info about contraindications, adverse effects, and medication compatibility.
Mandrill API is a mailing platform for sending transactional emails to users.
Main actors and use cases
We made up the list of features to add to the project right after competitor analysis.
When we mapped app structure, we prioritized functionality to implement first (the must-have features) and those to integrate later (nice to have features).
Then, we created a list of actors (users) who will interact with the app and the Admin Panel. They are:
Unregistered User, who does not have an account in the system, so cannot use the functionality of applications
Registered User, who successfully created an account in the system and has access to all functionality of applications
Unregistered Admin is a person who does not have a user account in the Admin Panel.
Registered Admin is a person who has a user account in the Admin Panel.
We have written user stories that describe each type of actor’s user path based on user goals. User stories are also handy for testing and quality assurance since they represent what the User should do on one or other screen.
Step 3. UI/UX design
Wireframes
We also leveraged the app structure during the wireframing stage. Wireframes are another Inception phase deliverable that includes a schematic view of app screen components. Instead of giving the ultimate design view, wireframes percentage the information displayed on the page, an outline of structure and layout of the page and user experience, and the overall direction and description of the user interface.
Once wireframes were ready, our designers created the app’s prototype in Figma, a professional web-based tool for prototyping apps. The prototype simulates the navigation, gestures, and overall look and feel of the app.
Then, we moved to the visual design stage to give more personality to the app.
Visual design
As we previously said, the app is going to serve women between the ages of 25-40. To make the app attractive for the target audience, we used a combination of pink and blue colors for Medicine, Home, and Emergency screens.
For the rest of the app’s screens, we used a blue background, white and dark blue elements to make users stay focused on their goals.
The main app’s screens we designed are:
Build-in calendar for logging symptoms and medication intake. Users flow for logging symptoms includes:
Selecting the date on the calendar at the Home screen
Pressing on the “Symptoms” button
Opening a carousel with symptoms and indicating symptom level
History of symptoms. The User can access one’s history via a full calendar view or from the Symptoms page.
Reminders. Users can keep track of their intake and log their symptoms.
Emergency information. Users have quick access to the critical information they choose to have.
Medications list. Users have their list of medications on hand with product details.
Articles. Users can access articles about medications, their adverse effects, and symptoms shared by other app users.
Offline access. The app provides users with offline access to the following data:
All medicine consumption related information
What users have to take
Users’ inventory
Results that we achieved
The Inception Phase took us two months from signing the contract to agreeing on the app’s last screen.
The team that worked on this project included:
1 Business analyst
1 Project manager
1 Solution architect
1 Designer
After partnering with us, client received the following Inception phase deliverables:
Written market and competitor research
Technical documentation
UI/UX design screens
A clickable prototype
A product roadmap
Project architecture
A list of integrations for medications database and user data encryption
