Post-Acute Care Management System

Medadept LLC delivers innovative solutions that enable collaborative and coordinated care between healthcare systems, physicians, and post-acute providers that optimize value, outcomes, and patient satisfaction.

Medadept’s suite of applications improve clinical and financial performance across the post-acute continuum and guarantee coordinated, collaborative, and accountable care for outpatients.

Post-Acute Care Business Domain

Medicare penalizes hospitals and other medical institutions with high same-cause readmission rates. Since rehospitalization of a patient within a 30-day period can result in a penalty, hospitals and accountable care organizations have started implementing solutions for monitoring patients’ condition outside of the hospital.

The cost of a hospitalization in the US can average between $12,000 to $22,000, so minimizing avoidable hospitalizations is something all parties are interested in.

Medadept’s innovative suite of applications provides the solutions to rehabilitation centers, home care and hospice agencies, and other post-acute care providers to coordinate their efforts and keep their patients well.

The Client’s Request

To accelerate the pace of R&D, Medadept made a decision to augment the efforts of its own development teams with assistance from a well-qualified contract programming company.

Medadept was already somewhat familiar with Velvetech’s reputation for excellent work and expertise in healthcare software development; so they called for a free consultation.

Within two weeks, Velvetech drafted the specification and proposed a project plan for the requested product – a web-based post-acute care coordination system that allows caregivers and coordinators to cooperate and track outpatients at home as well as during transition between post-acute care settings.

A cross-platform mobile medical surveillance application was also included in the planned deliverables.

How We Did It

A web-based post-acute care management system accompanied by a mobile medical surveillance app.

Synchrony Coordinator^®, a Web-based System

Medadept was already building UCARE™, the central piece of their post-care suite of applications, when Velvetech got involved.

Synchrony Coordinator^®, the web-based post-care coordination application that Velvetech was commissioned to build, allows caregivers to specify a comprehensive care plan, set care activity schedules, access reports, and manage a multitude of other tasks.

Besides UCARE, Velvetech had to integrate Synchrony with several other software products in Medadept’s application suite. We implemented secure text messaging so even patients not equipped with a mobile app could receive reminders and readily communicate with their care team.

Another point of integration was a reporting tool that visualizes Synchrony data as interactive reports to supplement Medadept’s clinical decision support system.

Velvetech significantly shortened the time needed to develop Synchrony through the implementation of creative integration mechanisms.

WatchWell^®, a Cross-platform Mobile App

The mobile apps had to be ready by the time of the web app release.

The client proposed a cross-platform mobile development solution – Xamarin. The Xamarin platform allows simultaneous development for iOS and Android mobile apps.

The Velvetech team used Xamarin to code WatchWell from scratch, including architecture, logic, database, navigation, screen transitions, etc.

The main functions of the WatchWell app are to facilitate communication between patients and care providers and to keep the patient activity engaged in their personal care plan.

Service providers may also use the mobile app when working in the field to enter patient data or securely communicate with the rest of the care team. While both patients and service providers use the same mobile app, providers have access to more features.

Project Scale

The development of the web application Synchrony lasted more than a year. It took a total of fifteen months to build the solution and integrate with other Medadept’s solutions.

The mobile application was ready within six months, from start to finish, thanks to the cross-platform development tool Xamarin.

Challenges

Integration

Velvetech was developing Synchrony at the same time Medadept was actively working on other components in their application suite. Many of the issues our team faced during the project had to do with the need for Synchrony to be closely integrated with the suite.

Specifications were developed collaboratively by Medadept and Velvetech and modified during the project as our shared vision of the technical aspects of Synchrony developed.

Velvetech met the challenge by establishing a direct contact with lead developers on the client’s side to align with the architecture of Medadept’s UCARE.

The team on our side also had to implement multiple temporary stubs to carry on the development and testing of the solution. The stubs were later replaced with actual functionality.

Database Integrity

Another challenge Velvetech had to overcome during the project implementation was a database structure provided by the client that grew more complex as Synchrony and WatchWell were being developed.

The Velvetech team came up with many scripts to keep the database updated on the staging and production environments. The scripts were later used for building complete database schemas to support the enhanced functionality of the application suite.

Mobile Architecture

Medadept asked Velvetech to work with them to program a single app for two user roles: a patient and a service provider.

The app architecture presented a challenge in that the development team had to create screen clone; a provider and a patient would see different home screens with distinct UI elements within the same app.

To deal with the two-user-roles situation the mobile developers at Velvetech also implemented an access management system.

The patient-user has restricted access rights compared to the provider-user, who can access more screens and options in the app. We also implemented custom navigation to accommodate the two user types.

Outcome

The applications developed by Velvetech are now integral parts of Medadept’s value proposition to clinics, hospitals, healthcare organizations, physicians, and post-acute providers.

As components of the UCARE suite of applications, Synchrony and WatchWell equip hospitals with powerful tools for more efficient and cost-effective care delivery models across the post-acute continuum. End users get more accountable, value-based care.

Velvetech was able to accelerate Medadept’s development plan due to extensive expertise in the development of complex systems. The applications we worked on integrate with Medadept’s UCARE and several third-party solutions.

Xamarin-based cross-platform mobile development is another area of Velvetech’s expertise that allowed us to finish the project on time and within budget. Developing individual native apps for iOS and Android would have taken longer and would have cost more.

All in all, the collaboration between Medadept and Velvetech is a great example how Velvetech can deliver value even to an innovative company engaged in developing paradigm-shifting solutions in its industry.

Gerald Bedwell on Working with Velvetech

Discover what working with Velvetech looks like through our client’s eyes. Read MedAdept’s story about the development of a post-acute care coordination suite of applications.

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What’s Next

Medadept, LLC is now well-positioned to take advantage of the enormous potential of their UCARE suite. The solutions we implemented for them can scale easily with Medadept’s anticipated growth.

Velvetech will be happy to assist our valued client to continue driving innovation in the healthcare industry by implementing emerging technologies such as IoMT and AI & ML solutions.