Enterprise Software Solutions
to Transform the Healthcare Space

The Challenge

Healthcare is a complicated process, which users find it increasingly difficult to navigate through – be it determining Medicare and insurance coverage and payments, setting up doctor’s appointments, or keeping track of prescriptions. Making sense of the various administered drugs alone is an overwhelming process. Patients must be able to figure out the effects of their drugs, compare brand name drugs against their generic counterparts, remember the intake time and dosage of their medication, etc.
As people from all segments of the population continue to get more and more comfortable with using voice technology, our partner envisioned the creation of a voice-controlled healthcare assistant, to help users figure out all of their complex healthcare information on their own time, from the comfort of their own home.
The company approached us with a vision to create an app for a comprehensive voice-enabled virtual health assistant platform. The objective was to develop an innovative solution that would empower individuals to manage their health effectively and provide a medical alerting system for households. The platform was to consist of a mobile application, a smart watch application, and applications that run on other IoT devices integral to user experience.

The Solution

The end product was designed as a means to simplify the complicated process of healthcare, similar to Alexa and Siri, but focusing specifically on healthcare. It covers essentially everything:

Medication and appointment reminders
Drug recalls
Medicare benefits
Initiating emergency calls
Locating key facilities and services
Renewing prescriptions

Many elderly patients have caregivers, which is why the virtual assistant also has the option to inform caregivers on when or whether the patient has taken their required dosage of medication, what appointments the patient has coming up or has missed, etc.

The mobile app provides for the easy and secure setup and management of the voice-activated assistant. To use the device, you set up a Virtual Household, to which new users can be added upon registration. Through the app, you can then create roles (e.g. caregiver, care receiver) and assign the appropriate permissions to those roles to be able to perform this or that action.

Product Overview

All in all, in the process of our ongoing, long-term partnership with our client, our team has managed to build a comprehensive software tool, that comes with the following technical features and functionalities:

Mobile Applications and IoT Device Setup: To ensure seamless integration and user-friendliness, we created a mobile application capable of managing system information and IoT device setup. The application would allow users to connect their IoT devices to their user accounts by leveraging Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) technology, establishing a direct connection between the mobile app and the IoT devices. Additionally, we implemented an alternative remote setup process that utilized the 4G cellular network, enabling users to interact with their smart devices even when out of BLE range.

Speech-to-Text Functionality: To enhance user convenience, our solution incorporated speech-to-text functionality. The mobile application processed user speech, formulated queries, and transmitted them to our cloud-based healthcare assistant. The assistant then provided the necessary information, which was converted into speech and relayed back to the user through the application.

Voice Training Solution: Recognizing that IoT devices may be used by multiple individuals, we implemented a voice training solution. This process enabled users to teach their smart devices their unique voices, allowing for personalized responses. By recognizing individual voices, the devices could provide customized answers and tailor recommendations to specific users. This feature is also color-coded in the device, meaning that each person’s voice activates a certain color in the app.

Integration with Smart Home Providers: Understanding the importance of a unified ecosystem, we integrated multiple smart home providers into the mobile application. This integration allowed users to manage and control their IoT devices alongside their existing smart home devices, providing a seamless all-in-one solution.

Alerting System: To ensure timely and critical notifications, we developed an alerting system using push notifications. We equipped our client’s IoT devices with the capability to send push notifications to users' mobile and IoT devices, notifying them of important alerts such as medication reminders, vital health updates, or emergency situations.

OTA Firmware Updates: To maintain the performance and functionality of the IoT devices, we implemented an Over-The-Air (OTA) update solution. This allowed us to remotely distribute and install new firmware versions on the devices, ensuring that users always had access to the latest features and improvements.

Smartwatch Application: This features an embedded Android OS launcher application (system user interface) for smartwatches with special emergency abilities and a special healthcare functionality. Since the application is embedded into the Android OS as an admin app, technically, it aims to solve a lot of challenges related to Android OS which are not common in usual Android applications. With its user-friendly UI, the app also monitors the users’ step count and heartbeat with the option to place emergency calls with the users’ location report.