How Codal harnessed the power of IoMT to deliver a critical mobile healthcare app

The digital transformation revolution in healthcare has arrived. Perhaps the most compelling evidence of this is the rise of internet of medical things (IoMT) devices. IoMT seeks to harness the power of connectivity to deliver integrated networks of medical devices, software applications, and health systems. With connected medical device technologies, IoMT is powering a new era of innovation in medicine. IoMT devices are allowing for more accurate diagnostics and treatments for a variety of ailments.

Intensive care units (ICUs) require some of the most sophisticated and reliable equipment in hospitals, including IoMT devices. When caring for critically ill ICU patients, there’s no room for error. Codal was brought in to help a leading medical device provider improve the performance of its continuous renal replacement therapy (CRRT) devices, essential treatment tools for ICU patients who have suffered an acute kidney injury (AKI). In order to ensure these devices are functioning properly and treating patients effectively, the company needs accurate and up-to-date data on their performance in hospital ICUs around the world.

After delivering new IoMT-enabled CRRT devices with the capability to upload machine performance data directly to the cloud, the company partnered with Codal to make the data easily and securely accessible by its sales representatives. Codal’s development and UX design teams were more than ready for the challenge.

Superior customer experience through connected medical technology

With a typical hospital customer using up to 20 CRRT devices, there is the potential for a significant amount of data to be uploaded to the cloud for analysis. As part of its commitment to superior customer service, the company wants to ensure its sales representatives are armed with this data to help customers monitor the performance of their devices.

Codal’s task was multifaceted. Our teams needed to build a system for taking this significant amount of data from the cloud, analyzing it to provide necessary feedback, and packaging it in an attractive and user-friendly mobile application to help the company’s sales representatives have impactful conversations with their customers.

A powerful microservices backend

Working in close collaboration with the company’s internal subject matter experts, the Codal team determined the most relevant key performance indicators (KPIs) for data analysis. With each CRRT device consistently reporting tens of thousands of data points, it was essential to determine set metrics to be drawn from that data to provide the best possible understanding of how an individual CRRT machine is functioning.

The Codal development team then set up a robust, scalable microservices backend to manage the data. Amazon Web Services (AWS) Lambda provided a fast, cost-effective platform to handle the significant amounts of data coming from the CRRT machines. The team used AWS Relational Database Service (RDS), Redshift, and Elastic MapReduce (EMR) to store and analyze this large amount of data and calculate the determined KPIs with high accuracy.

Additionally, the Codal team used Realm.io to enable the analyzed data to be accessed in the application offline. This is an essential feature for the company’s sales representatives when visiting clients with network connectivity that is not dependable.

Extensive user research for an intuitive UX

After the Codal development team finished its work, it was time for the UX and UI specialists to design a platform for sales representatives to help improve a hospital’s understanding of their AKI treatment programs, compare the program against peers and improve overall workflows and operational performance in the ICU.

Codal kicked off the UX design process by conducting extensive interviews with internal stakeholders, as well as multiple different types of users. The Codal team went on-site to visit hospitals in Cincinnati, Ohio, Louisville, and Lexington, Kentucky, speaking directly with doctors, nurses, administrators about what they were looking for in a new platform. These in-person interviews proved to be invaluable as they provided valuable perspective on what is important to the day-to-day work of these medical professionals.

After analyzing and synthesizing nearly three months of research, as well as working through affinity mapping, Codal worked with the internal team to assemble the final product. The team then created a sitemap to lay out the screen hierarchy. Following this, it was time to mock up high-fidelity wireframes. Designed to help craft an intuitive experience for users, these wireframes were iterated on with feedback from the internal team. While the team incorporated some charts for data from Highcharts, the complexity of the KPIs meant that many charts needed to be designed from scratch to provide superior visualization.

After getting approval on these wireframes, Codal’s UI team set about implementing key design elements to create a truly aesthetically pleasing application. The UI designers effectively incorporated the company’s colors, fonts, and branding elements to ensure consistency and support the intelligent UX.

A game-changing mobile application

After combining a powerful, scalable backend for extensive data storage and analysis with a streamlined frontend and an attractive UX/UI experience from Codal’s expert designers, the team delivered a superior mobile application. With the ability to transfer massive amounts of data into easily digestible reports, the app represents a powerful tool for sales representatives. With the ability to compare the CRRT data of multiple hospitals, sales representatives are enabled to understand just how well an individual customer’s devices are functioning — and provide suggestions and feedback to help a hospital get the most from its CRRT machines.

Purpose-built solutions for the healthcare digital transformation

Codal built a system for taking a significant amount of cloud data from continuous renal replacement therapy (CRRT) devices in hospital ICUs, analyzing it to provide necessary feedback, and packaging it in an attractive and user-friendly mobile application to help the company’s sales representatives have impactful conversations with their customers. These conversations ultimately lead to a more effective approach to treatment in the most critical of hospital environments.

Interested in learning more about Codal’s healthcare design and development solutions? Contact us today.