Life-saving Emergency App for Ambulance Call

Client's Request

The customer is a Swiss startup focused on fast start and growth in the DACH region. The client was looking for a trusted contractor with proven mobile application development and healthcare tech expertise, capable of making a turnkey health emergency application in a short time, and also capable of organizing development processes in constraints of incomplete and changing requirements. The main function was to provide the ability to call for help in the case of a sudden deterioration in health, so that the certified respondents could reach you as quickly as possible and provide the necessary assistance before the ambulance arrives. Besides, when calling for help, there was a parallel call to the local ambulance service.

Solution Overview

It was also a non-trivial task to find a solution that would make it possible to immediately contact the registered Responders when calling for help. The Itexus team was able to find and implement a solution that satisfies all the requirements, including legal ones, using the Programmable Voice Service Twillio. 

To ensure time and budget constraints, the admin panel was implemented in React admin. This Framework is open-sourced and maintained by marmelab and will allow reducing time efforts for development in comparison with a custom solution. 

One of the core features is the possibility to interact with the customer’s legal consultants, since the health emergency app works with personal and medical data, therefore, an important task was to ensure that the functionality meets the GDPR and HIPAA standards. 

The implemented solution among other features empowers users to:

• Register as a user (Victim) or as a member able to provide emergency assistance (Responder);
• Send help signal to not only local official medical services, but also to the nearest accredited users with the necessary skills to provide assistance (Responders);
• To track the location of the First Responders on the way online;
• To leave feedback for the Responder and rate it;
• Simulate the emergency case for the Responders to get comfortable with the application and safely try out the main functionality
• Provide the Responder with the shortest route to the victim, AED stations along the way, and rescue instructions;
• Support users with necessary common info (Hospitals and AED stations nearby, instructions for different emergency cases, statistics and news feed.

Development Process

From the beginning of the project, despite the lack of precise requirements, design and scope of the tasks, it was critical for the client to fix the budget and timeline. After a two-week discovery phase, the Itexus team committed itself to the deadlines and budget, fixing the key requirements of the client.

Due to the need for an urgent start and tight deadlines, work on the design requirements and the development itself were carried out simultaneously. The Itexus project manager and analyst worked closely with the customer’s product owner, focusing on what was important and providing the information to make decisions. Such an approach allowed not only to keep the project scope within the specified constraints, but also provided the client with complete control and transparency of the development and management process, since the team regularly reported on the results achieved and the most important decisions made jointly.

Results

In 4 months, the team delivered the first working version that met all the client’s stated requirements, budget and timeline. The sustained timeline allowed the customer to start users testing on time and unblocked the start of further marketing activities required by the client at this stage.

Currently, the Itexus team is working on the second version of the health emergency application which includes additional features, and also adapts the existing app for various devices (smart watches, smart home, etc.).