DBA - Trust Care Case Study

Summary

We built a patient-centered application for TrustCare that improved communication between patients and providers, streamlined healthcare management, and incorporated novel features such as in-app texting and prescription price checks.

The Challenge

TrustCare is an innovative healthcare provider, offering a blend of urgent, primary, and pediatric care services across multiple locations. Its distinctive approach to healthcare combines the immediacy of urgent care with the personalized, longitudinal care typical of a primary care provider. TrustCare's multifaceted services, attentive healthcare professionals, and patient-centered approach make it a leading choice for comprehensive healthcare needs.

Driven by a commitment to deliver unparalleled patient experiences, TrustCare's CEO, Warren Herring, recognized the need for a tailored patient-facing application that seamlessly integrated with TrustCare's unique healthcare model. The app needed to have an intuitive, native-like experience that gave the healthcare team at TrustCare the ability to communicate with the patients as well as with their fellow care team members within a compliant and familiar platform. The goal was to transform the way patients and providers communicate and manage healthcare, embodying TrustCare's ethos.

In their quest for a suitable solution, TrustCare had evaluated several applications on the market. Unfortunately, each fell short in critical aspects - whether it was an unappealing user interface, lack of white-labeling capabilities, or missing key features. It became evident that none of these applications could sufficiently deliver on the comprehensive vision of TrustCare+.

Unfazed by this challenge, Warren Herring made a strategic decision to develop TrustCare's bespoke application. To realize this ambition, TrustCare needed a partner proficient in developing complex, tailored software solutions. DBA, a renowned product and software consultancy known for building and scaling a broad range of innovative digital products, emerged as the perfect partner.

DBA’s technical excellence, MedTech experience, and deep understanding of user-centered design made them the ideal collaborator. The TrustCare team was confident that with DBA’s expertise, they could navigate the complexities of the project while keeping the TrustCare+ vision at the forefront. The partnership marked the beginning of an ambitious journey to transform the healthcare experience for both patients and providers through the development of TrustCare+.

The Solution

Single Page Application

DBA provided technical guidance and built the architecture of the new TrustCare+ platform. The result was an application developed using Elixir for the backend and Flutter for the app, running inside a native "container" on the Web, Android, and iOS, deployed securely to Google Cloud.

Introducing a front-end framework like Flutter allowed the user interface to be decoupled from the backend. This enabled different teams to work autonomously on their parts of the application, a significant advantage for a project with globally distributed teams. Additionally, using Flutter meant that iOS, Android, and the Web could all be served from a single application, significantly reducing multi-platform development costs.

Iteration and User Testing

With each iteration of the user experience, DBA brought in a new group of users for testing. Tests were structured with individual users and involved an in-depth exploration of various prototypes. Feedback from these tests was invaluable in refining the information architecture, as well as the iconography and language.

Each test reduced problems for the end users and enhanced the user experience. As DBA worked closely with TrustCare, they quickly grasped the domain-specific business logic, providing essential architectural guidance that facilitated dramatic implementation velocity gains.

Elixir and Flutter

Choosing Elixir for the backend and Flutter for the frontend offered a range of benefits. Elixir is known for building scalable and maintainable applications, while Flutter provides a fast and expressive framework for building beautiful apps.

Using these technologies helped DBA create an application that could maintain a highly performant frontend user experience while interacting with multiple external APIs on the backend, including integrations with AthenaHealth, Hint Health, and RX solutions. The resulting codebase was more maintainable, and on-boarding for new developers was quicker, leading to more rapid product development and cost savings.

The Results

The TrustCare+ app has transformed the healthcare experience for TrustCare's patients. By granting patients the ability to manage their healthcare with greater ease and convenience, TrustCare+ has significantly improved patient experiences.

TrustCare+ provides numerous benefits to its users, including:

Text your Care Team: Instead of waiting for return phone calls, patients can get quick answers to their healthcare questions via in-app text messages.
Prescription price check: The TrustCare+ app allows patients to check prescription prices, providing a discount on prescriptions for TrustCare+ members.
Care at the speed of you: TrustCare+ allows patients to manage their healthcare swiftly and efficiently, enabling them to get back to work or family faster.

The launch of TrustCare+ has significantly transformed the healthcare experience for TrustCare's patients. The TrustCare+ app has not only met TrustCare's initial objectives but also delivers more features than originally planned, higher security than required, and laid the foundation for future scalability. This success exemplifies the strong vision of TrustCare's CEO, Warren Herring, and stands as a testament to DBA's ability to deliver robust, secure, and user-friendly healthcare applications.