Cooperation Model
Technologies
Industry
Team size
Background
One of Beetroot’s in-house R&D projects, Eshmun is a telehealth app designed to enable nurses, medical practitioners, and family caregivers to monitor aging patients’ health by collecting and displaying real-time telemetry data in a user-friendly digital dashboard.
Since the combination of technologies and software solutions differs for each healthcare provider in every healthcare ecosystem, interoperability and regulatory compliance are the key product challenges.
- Beetroot started an in-house R&D project to foster our domain expertise and facilitate the Learning & Development practices across the Beetroot ecosystem.
- We identified HealthTech as the target area as it perfectly aligns with our focus on sustainable impact and provides a virtually unlimited platform for innovation and tech experimentation.
- Launched in early 2022, it’s an ongoing project with the development team encompassing 3 software engineers, 1 UX/UI designer, 1 Business Analyst, and 1 project manager.
The modern healthtech sector offers nearly endless opportunities. Our first step in finding ours was figuring out some essential objectives we wanted to achieve with our R&D project, both impact- and business-wise. As a Business Analyst, I was particularly motivated to find a way to match these goals. Finally, we decided to build a telehealth app as it creates a tangible difference for patients and care providers alike. In addition, telemedicine enables us to use the most cutting-edge technologies and gain further experience in navigating healthcare’s complex, highly regulated landscape.
Solution
The architecture of the Eshmun app was developed with interoperability and scalability in mind. It consists of four main layers: Clients, Communication Components, API & Management, and Storage & Infrastructure services.
Clients
A Client in the app development terminology is an interface or application that a user interacts with directly. The Eshmun telemedicine platform is designed to include three Clients: one for each of the app’s user groups (patients, caregivers, and platform administrators).
The dashboard designated for caregivers is implemented as a web portal. It’s a user-friendly hub for nurses, family members, and other care providers to get an overall picture of the patient’s health, treatment prescriptions, and relevant details.
Eshmun will also include a mobile app for caregivers.
Communication Components
The core feature of the Eshmun app is real-time communication using proprietary devices. The platform will use voice messaging, live chat, alerts, and safe-listing capabilities to enable patients and caregivers to interact with each other. One of the top priorities in this direction is ensuring compliance with the designated healthcare system’s regulative standards, such as HIPAA, GDPR, or PIPEDA.
API & Management
The databases for the app Clients are interconnected via a system of APIs and microservices.
The management layer is responsible for executing the app’s business logic for collecting, processing, storing, and routing data to users and other software. This includes such tasks as routing, authentication, notification, and pub/sub, to name a few.
Storage & Infrastructure Services
The app is designed to use cloud-based services. In particular, Google JSP hosts the API and business logic layer, stores user and business data, and manages the IT infrastructure. The latter, in its turn, contains such functional modules as storing raw data and MVC and completing background operations.
To recap the above, the data collected by the Eshmun app flow between the Clients to the API & Management layer hosted on the Google JSP.
The most exciting thing for me in this project is collecting data from devices and using it to simplify caregivers’ routine tasks. I am a huge fan of different health and fitness trackers, which I use daily, so it’s also interesting for me to dive deep into systems that help people live healthier and happier lives. Some healthcare-specific challenges, like privacy and data security, appeal to me too. Realizing that people’s lives can literally depend on your product’s reliability gives extra motivation to work harder.
Results
The Eshmun telenursing platform is an ongoing R&D project involving Beetroot’s senior software engineers and tech leads for approximately 6-8 hours per week. This software solution is developed to convert Beetroot’s significant cross-domain experience into a cutting-edge telehealth product benefiting patients, caregivers, and medical facilities focusing on aging health. The platform uses its powerful toolset to improve senior people’s quality of life and extend healthcare providers’ capacity.
An R&D project of this scale is an inspiring challenge for us. As professional software engineers, we embrace a strive for experimentation and daring, and developing a telehealth platform using the latest technologies and software gives plenty of opportunities in this direction.
