Telehealth Platform to Provide Worldwide Consulting
A telehealth project that connects patients with the right doctors in the US. All doctors go through the validation of documents and specialties confirming their experience. The point of the project is that patients from all over the world can pay and ask questions to highly qualified specialists, and doctors themselves can earn extra money by spending a minimum amount of their time.
Who Can Use Tarka Health
The target audience of the platform is patients worldwide who need advice from professional American doctors.
What did the client come to us with?
We were approached by a client from the USA, who is also a doctor and works in healthcare, and wants to help patients from many countries around the world. The client had just an idea, and no design or technical documentation – only examples of competitors. We showed them relevant experience with chats, shopping, and other functions (pretty close to what we did for WriterLink social media).
Project’s First Preparations And Our Assessments
First of all, our project manager gathered all the requirements from the client. When all the requirements were reviewed by the client, our team formed the technical documentation. We additionally created a diagram, a site map, where all user roles are shown: a patient, a doctor, and an administrator.
The estimate was $23,000 for the entire project. We bought a ready-made template for the project, so we did not spend money on designing a custom one.
Technologies We Chose
With a large load on the project, we made the architecture and environment of the project such that it would expand, depending on the load. We used technologies here like the latest versions of Laravel (backend) and Vue.js (frontend). And, of course, the most important technology is Stripe to process the payments that the patient makes to buy a paid question to the doctor, and then they get a response from the doctor. Last but not least, we used Jira, Confluence, Excel, and MindMeister as third-party services.
Development team
We chose middle plus level developers for the project. Two developers worked on the project. The process was divided into different roles, they shared their responsibility. For example, one developer worked on the role of a patient, and another one worked on the role of a doctor. Someone was engaged in both roles, but the work was coordinated so that the guys were always aware of who they were doing. So, there were no conflicts, and they used the same programming standards that would coincide with our requirements. In addition, the team also consisted of a technical leader, two QA testers, and a designer.
Collaborating With A Client
The performed work was presented to them in the form of video reports, and we were showing them how far we have moved on budget and time. Reports were presented every Friday. Meetings and tours of the project were held once a week, once every two weeks.
So, the client always knew which part of the functionality we were working on in the next two to three weeks.
Description of the development
The initial estimated project development time was 774 hours. In reality, we managed to complete the project in 5 months.
The client contributed some changes in design, original ideas for some features. But they listened to our recommendations to not to make too radical changes, so they wouldn’t affect the project’s architecture and structure. Luckily, there were no critical pitfalls.
A project related to medicine must be safe. So, we focused on the fact that the site and the architecture of the project itself would be flexible. At the same time, we developed a flexible and strong web solution architecture that could handle severe levels of load.
Services such as Pusher were used for reactivity and getting notifications in real-time without rebooting the system. It’s especially useful for developing online chats, making them work correctly, so they could provide quick patient-doctor communication. Among the other tools we used are Jira, Confluence, Excel, and MindMeister.
Design
During the development process, we discovered that the default template did not quite meet our and our clients’ needs. And we brought our designers to work on this template. During the development process, the template was refined and customized. A rather unique design was obtained, which can now be seen on Tarka Health website. For the design, we used Figma to customize the template.
Edits to the schedule were made by the task pool in Trello. Also, with the help of Kanban, we divided everything into processes to understand at what stage design changes are being made. And it was always obvious when the design would be ready.
What Was The Final Solution
Tarka Health platform was created for people around the world, allowing them to consult with qualified, certified doctors from the USA directly on this site. The main advantage of this platform is that a patient can skip traveling to America to consult a professional. They can simply visit the site, create an account, select a doctor, complete a comprehensive questionnaire, provide all the necessary documents, and pay for the consultation with the doctor.
Creating an Account For A Patient
Creating an account on the Tarka Health platform is free. However, the service of receiving a consultation from a doctor is paid, as is the function of uploading documents related to the medical history, such as laboratory results and radiological examination results.
After creating an account, the patient has access to the accounts of doctors, depending on the specialty and disease direction.
Fill in the Blanks
To book a call, a customer opens a special window on the site for filling in such important data as name, surname, postal address, phone, and country. There is also a “Get Price” button to register a consultation and determine its cost. The site also has the platform’s phone numbers to register a consultation via mobile call.
The doctors have 72 hours to respond to the patient’s request, and if the answer is not received, the patient will receive a refund. If the answer received is not clear enough for the patient, the site has the opportunity to ask 3 additional questions, which the doctor must answer within 24 hours. After receiving a full consultation, the patient can evaluate some of the doctor’s services.
Current Specialities
For each client’s need, the website has categories of health issues to which they turn to qualified doctors. Each of these areas has the form of an icon and a tile, so that a client of any age can clearly see what problem they need to consult a doctor for. In particular, the Tarka Health website has several categories, such as:
- Endocrinology
- Gastroenterology
- Hematology
- Infectious diseases
- and others.
Current State of The Project
The project is currently launched on a platform and the client is satisfied with the project. They are currently conducting a marketing campaign, and we are supporting the project.