Development of Analytics for Health Centers in the US
Relevant
Client
Reporting and analytics platform tailored for US healthcare.
Creating MVP for US healthcare analytics platform
work
scope
MVP
Healthcare
Web/UX/UI Design
- Challenges we managed
Relevant builds web-based software for healthcare organizations. Their flagship product is used by Community Health Centers to gain insight into clinical quality, revenue lifecycle, and resource utilization. Relevant asked us help in developing the ad-hoc reporting in their product. We knew that running a Community Health Center requires dozens of questions to be answered each day. We knew that the answers for those questions are stored within Electronic Health Records databases and can be retrieved in a form of reports. But we also knew that the non-technical person (eg. doctor or resource manager) couldn't prepare such reports on their own. The challenge we faced was to deliver an easy to use and elegant tool that allows for non-complicated creation and generation of reports that require just a briefly trained person
- Setting the stage
In that case we had a great opportunity to deal with the Client experienced in IT, that already had a vision for solving the challenge. The guys from Relevant provided us with a set of high-level requirements for the features. Thanks to our technical Project Manager we were able to grasp all the requirements in no time. To confirm our understanding of the scope, our Project Manager prepared lo-fi mockups for all the features. Once the mockups were approved, our Project Manager prepared a product backlog with detailed descriptions of the scope. Our Client wanted their users to get the value out of the new features as soon as possible. Thus we cooperated with Relevant to define a consistent roadmap and releases. Having learned what's to be done exactly, we gathered the best team and were ready to kick it off!
- Kicking it off
At Visuality we believe that teams achieve goals best when they know the purpose and limitations of their actions. Thus we started the works with the kick-off meeting. Our development team, Project Manager and Relevant's Product Manager on the video-call and we were ready to start. We introduced ourselves to each other and explained the domain of the project and its goals. Once all the questions were answered, we were ready to agree on the organization of the development works. The time zone difference is usually painful for projects. Here, with an experienced Client and just enough hours of overlapping work, we felt we can make use of it. When we were ready with some feature, we sent it for approval. While we were off from work, they were able feed back on that. So just in the morning we could handle the remarks.
- Technologies
From the very beginning we knew that we would be building a part of an already existing application. Thus it was clear for us that our part need to seamlessly fit into the other parts. This concerned application's look & feel and most of the technologies used for both frontend and backend. However, we had the freedom to choose the technology for graphical data representation. PivotTable.js was a perfect choice for this purpose.
- Report Builder
Report Builder allowed Health Center's Analysts to create and publish the reports based on data from multiple databases. We provided a database schema browser with search and point-and-click function for the ease of use. Reports were based on SQL query editor with syntax highlighting and autocomplete hints. Erroneous parts of SQL query were automagically highlighted after a query run. Each report before publishing was checked for the SQL query correctness.
- Parametric Reports
Report feature was meant for Health Center's Analysts to create new reports that they can then give to their non-technical staff who can self-serve the data they need. The actual users of the reports themselves are nurses, doctors and administrators who have daily/weekly/monthly needs for lists of things: people to call, files to process etc. Report templates with parameter values set by users seemed to be a perfect solution for recurring reports without having to email an Analyst every time. We created a pseudo-language that allowed to embed custom parameters to SQL queries. Once published, users were able to generate reports with report parameters defined by them.
- Report Results
Analyst was able to define multiple views to present report's results in both: tabular and graphical form. Configuration of each view was saved within the Report, so other users could browse the results with ease. Report's results can be exported to XLS file format for easy offline browsing and analysis.
Their team was friendly, communicative, met deadlines, and delivered a stable output on both fronts. Their project manager is very knowledgeable and kept the process flowing effectively while following an effective Agile methodology.