SAAS PLATFORM DEVELOPMENT FOR PATIENTS RECORDS

Project Scope

This project was developed for a client (startup) in the MedTech area. Their goal was to develop a comprehensive solution connecting patients and doctors (caregivers). CallCTO envisioned a SaaS platform for Patient records that enables effective interaction and monitoring tools for depression/ anxiety patients and their doctors (caregivers). The benefits of this project are to use of a mobile device (smartphone/ tablet) to establish bi-directional interaction between the Patient and the Doctor, as well as passive monitoring of the Patient’s state. The goal is to make Patient records an Integrated platform with different modules, such as the Patient’s module, Doctor’s module, Caregiver’s module, and Server/ Admin module. 

Challenges

Technology is infiltrating every aspect of our lives. Depression is a disease with a huge impact on a patient’s life, requires frequent visits to Healthcare providers, and requires excellent management of symptoms and relapses to reduce future complications. Good therapy optimization would lead to a clear benefit for these patients.

All these parameters and the lack of clear holistic solutions that support patient and disease management show the clear need to provide a patient-centric solution, i.e., the SaaS platform. Using this application, a patient’s mood and behavior can effectively be monitored, and the Doctor is notified every time about a “suspicious” mood, providing the patients with real-time advice and multifold interaction (text, call, chat). Also – there is an option to passively monitor (record) all of the Patient’s activity (including location, daily movements, social activities-calls, text messages, etc.). All these data enable an improved approach towards better interception and treatment of depression symptoms.

Project details

.This product allows patients, caregivers, and doctors to be able to use the Patient records platform from their mobile phones/ tablets. Any mobile device with a browser is to access and open the application. The Patients records platform allows real-time interaction between patients and doctors and enables background (passive) monitoring of the Patient’s state (mood).  

The Patient’s module of the SaaS platform includes: building a profile (based on a Questionnaire), Diet planning – meal tracker, Adherence program (therapy monitor), Setup and following treatment goals (routines), Weight tracker, Exercise tracker (plan), Stress control tool, Mood tracker, read/follow Education materials, live interaction (chat) with the Doctor, etc.

The Caregiver’s module enables complete access to the Patient module, with all functions and features, plus getting real-time alerts about the certain state (behavior) of the Patient.

The Doctor’s module incorporates Dashboard for monitoring associated patients in real time, reviewing Patient status, following Patient’s attributes and activities, getting notifications (alerts), sending advice, live communication, etc.

The Backend (server side) logic realizes all the app logic, including passive monitoring (sensors reading, recording, forwarding), SMS and calls log, notifications, alerts, the logic for estimation of the Patient’s state, live messaging, etc.

Technical Architecture

By using the proper architecture, we have ensured the scalability, functionality, and reliability of the developed solution. Here we elaborate on the architecture in detail by describing the different development tools used, the server infrastructure which assures the reliability of the solution, and the SaaS setup. 

The main part of the project was developed for the ZigBee patient device, which runs JavaScript API (for sensor connectivity: smart blood pressure monitor, smart glucometer, pulse oximeter, temperature scale, smart weight scale, height scale, etc.), and the SaaS application was developed in PHP/ Laravel. The backend solution is PHP/ Laravel-based (RESTful service model), and the project is supported by a server running Apache / MySQL database. In the following sections – the development tools and the system (server) infrastructure of the Patient records platform are elaborated.

Fig. 1.2. Technical setup of the Patients records project

Tool chain

During the Patient records project development – the ZigBee device platform and API-s were used; for the SaaS backend solution, we used PHP/Laravel, etc. These tools provide a flexible UI toolkit, Wi-Fi/ Bluetooth, database connectivity, and many more options.

The backend was based on PHP/ Laravel, MySQL database server, and Apache hosting server on AWS cloud.

The complete Tool-chain is presented in the following table:

System infrastructure

In the Patients records project development – we have applied a ‘three-tier’ or client-server architecture to get better application scalability, lower maintenance, and increased reuse of components. Three-tier architecture offers a technology-neutral method of building blocks that employ standard interfaces and provide services for the next logical ‘tier’.

Fig. 2.1. Three-tier deployment in the Patients, records project.

The first tier is reserved for the ZigBee device data acquisition and the client application, the second tier is the application logic (webserver), and the third tier represents the database server. The development of the Patients records app consisted of these main phases:

• Client device / Software development – The Patient’s sensors are connected to the ZigBee device, which is directly connected to the mobile station of the health monitoring system. The main functionalities are placed here – such as data acquisition (patterns, images) and data presentation (display). The software components developed here are API-s for ZigBee with Bluetooth interface to the mobile phone. These data are forwarded to the application server. 
• Backend / Programming logic – The application layer has been developed in PHP. It controls application functionality by performing data processing, data retrieval, and reporting functions. The application server gets requests from client devices, does the data transfer and data processing for medical diagnosis and recommendations, and acts as a client to the database server. It also facilitates visual reports.
• Database Management System – is dedicated to storing the data required by the middle tier (application logic). This tier runs on a cloud server (MySQL on AWS), called a database server. This tier enables storage, retrieval, and modifying clients’ (medical) records/ images in real-time and also reporting capabilities (display/ analyses).

SaaS architecture setup

Each SaaS application involves multiple clients and multiple end-users. The data is shared between these end-users and (mostly) not with other clients’ end-users. So, every set of end-users (of each client) should access a different set of data. In most cases, the code used by all the clients can be the same. 

To provide smooth, secure functionality and multi-tenancy – we have created a single codebase and multiple databases – separate for each client. No modification was required to our existing single-tenant codebase. We only had to modify the configuration file to select a database depending on the client.