Developing a Patient-Friendly EHR Platform to Revolutionise the Traditional Clinical System

In the healthcare domain, the conventional clinic-centric model presented numerous challenges - impeding patient visits, diminishing satisfaction, and causing delays in doctor consultations. Key obstacles to effective clinical interactions included limited clinic access, extended wait times, inconvenient diagnostic tests, difficulties in monitoring health data, rigid appointment scheduling, and obstacles in obtaining prescribed medicines and refills.

The demanding schedules of individuals and lengthy commutes to the clinic create hurdles for patients in adhering to their medical appointments, increasing the likelihood of missed consultations.

To overcome these challenges, our client aimed to move beyond the traditional clinic approach that required in-person doctor visits and physical prescriptions. Their goal was to digitize the entire patient journey, from booking appointments to virtual doctor consultations to receiving prescribed medicines conveniently at their doorstep.

Our client wanted to offer their patients the convenience of digital consultations, at-home diagnostic tests, and seamless delivery of prescribed medicines. But they had a very high-level back of the napkin sketch outlining their idea, coupled with some references of solutions they were inspired by.

The team at Maruti Techlabs closely collaborated with the client's core team and subject matter experts to refine their concept and map it against a list of potential features and their internal workflows.

Here is a broad overview of how the platform would function to ensure a seamless patient experience-

Maruti Techlabs took a step-by-step approach toward defining the overall engagement lifecycle, as covered below -

    1. Project Discovery Workshop

With every client or prospect approaching us with an idea, we always recommend getting started with a low-risk discovery workshop. This is a critical phase of the engagement, as it helps outline the overall feasibility of the idea and ensures that both parties have crossed their t’s and dotted their i’s before investing a lot of resources.

We initiated the engagement with the client over a 7-day project discovery workshop led by a technical architect, a technical lead, and a frontend developer from the Maruti Techlabs team.

During the workshop, our team assisted the client in conducting research, gathering insights, and assessing the feasibility of their idea. We helped them weigh in factors like system architecture and solutioning, integrations, and design to ascertain the platform’s capability to address scale as more users got on board.

By the end of the workshop, we had a thorough project analysis report that highlighted requirements, technical scope, budget, deliverables, and timelines. Considering the scope of work and tight timelines, we assembled a dedicated cross-disciplinary team consisting

• Frontend Engineers
• Backend Engineers 
• QA Engineers
• DevOps Engineers
• UI/UX Designer
• Project Manager 
• Technical Architect

    2. Project Analysis and Roadmap

As a result of the project discovery workshop, our team also conducted an exhaustive requirements analysis, resulting in a comprehensive project roadmap divided into different phases. This roadmap outlined the project's scope, deliverables, key milestones, timelines, and associated details.

• Technical Scope: In accordance with the client's needs, we defined the following scope of work:-
  1. Designing and developing the website
  2. Building a CRM tool for patient management
  3. Creating three portals for information management - 
     • Patient Portal
     • Doctor Portal
     • Sales Portal
• Project Breakdown: Our technical lead created a comprehensive project breakdown that outlined different phases of the project. The team further classified these phases into different sprints. 
• Project Timeline and Milestones: The document identified dependencies and outlined well-defined deadlines for each sprint. We flagged major milestones based on priorities cited by the client. 
• Tech Stack: Based on the client requirements, our team chose ReactJS for front-end development and NodeJS for back-end development. For the CRM tool, we chose Zoho CRM.
• Acceptance Criteria: The project roadmap cited acceptance criteria for each phase, which included development progress, test results, and quality metrics.
• Communication and Collaboration Plan: We understand the importance of collaborative efforts in creating stellar products. We engaged with the client on weekly calls and regular messages through Slack.

    3. Website Development

The result of the discovery phase was a blueprint that our team could stick to during the development phase. This made it easy for our team to get started, as the scope details and deliverables were fairly straightforward. We opted for a tech stack that would expedite development, shorten time to market, and optimize development costs.

After analyzing their requirements, our team suggested utilizing Gatsby for website development. Gatsby is a modern web development framework that leverages React to build blazing-fast, statically generated websites.

Furthermore, our team paid particular attention to the design and layout of the website, recognizing that it served as the initial point of contact between the client and their patients. Keeping this in mind, our design team created the user interface with -

• User-centric approach
• Clear and intuitive navigation
• Consistent branding
• Information hierarchy
• Whitespace and readability
• Mobile responsiveness
• Visual elements

We used Contentful, a flexible and scalable content management system (CMS), to update the website's content, as it allowed the client to update the content on the site without needing to change the code.

We ensured that the final product was search engine optimized, as it would serve as a key traffic driver for the company.

    4. CRM Development

A CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system is crucial to streamlining sales and marketing processes. The client wanted to launch the MVP of the CRM at the earliest and on a limited budget. They further wanted an easy-to-use platform that could streamline the internal processes. Keeping these requirements in mind, we opted to use Zoho CRM.

We tailored the Zoho CRM to align perfectly with the requirements of their administrators and sales representatives. The tool seamlessly handled lead pursuit, conversion, and interaction management throughout the sales cycle and instant report generation.

Leveraging Zoho CRM's adaptability, we seamlessly integrated the tool with the client’s website. This integration ensured that each patient form submission automatically generated a unique lead within the CRM, empowering the sales team to monitor and nurture leads with precision.

    5. Portal Development

Simultaneously, our developers worked on building distinct portals to cater to different user groups, including sales representatives, patients, and healthcare practitioners. These portals presented concise summaries of the data accessible within the application, enhancing user engagement and data management.

• Sales Representative Portal: This portal was seamlessly integrated with CRM, providing the sales team with robust tools for monitoring and updating user statuses. This streamlined user management and engagement, enhancing overall efficiency.
   

• Patient Portal: The patient portal enables patients to autonomously update their information, submit patient waiver forms, upload test reports, and schedule appointments via a telehealth link. This self-service functionality enhanced patient engagement and convenience.
   

• Doctor Portal: Healthcare practitioners were equipped with a dedicated portal to view patient records, check lab reports, and prescribe medications. We leveraged Zoho Signature to incorporate the doctor's signature directly onto the prescriptions, ensuring authenticity and compliance with healthcare regulations.