Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) is a non-profit organization for medical providers focused on health and wellness innovation. The organization's mission is to improve healthcare through the power of technology and information. They provide events, education, and insights to the global health community. To help maximize public accessibility to the health ecosystem, HIMSS leverages advanced IT and management systems.
The project goal was to develop a digital solution for HIMSS’ vast network of healthcare professionals, creating a platform called "Accelerate" where they could connect and exchange ideas. The platform aimed to improve the quality, safety, cost-effectiveness, and accessibility of the health ecosystem by providing healthcare professionals with valuable resources to improve their knowledge and skills.
Our team of product designers and engineers worked closely with the HIMSS team to build out the digital platform.
We followed the Agile methodology for the healthcare app development process, providing continuous collaboration and ensuring that the final project not only met the client’s requirements but exceeded expectations.
We used a combination of ReactJS, PostgreSQL, and AWS to develop the platform. Our engineers played a key role in the maintenance of the site, solving bug tickets, and improving the site's speed.
Quality assurance is a core component of the development process for our team, it ensures the functionality and reliability of the product.
Perpetual designed and implemented an efficient onboarding process for the HIMSS Accelerate platform, which included collecting information and recommending users and organizations to follow. Data was gathered on organizational information, user interests, and professional goals to help users connect with others in the healthcare community. This process was vital to creating a personalized and engaging digital experience for users on the platform.
We worked on improving the site speed of the HIMSS Accelerate platform by identifying and fixing bugs. We also implemented the CDN Cloudinary to reduce the file size of user avatars which helped decrease the load time for the site. The result was a noticeable boost in the overall user experience as the platform became more responsive and faster to navigate.
Our team of engineers was responsible for the creation and modification of a PostgreSQL database that included over 30 tables detailing users, events, organizations, groups, and more. For the database, they also contributed to the creation of new tables, adding columns to existing tables, architecting a backend gamification plan, and handling relationships between values. This work helped create a robust and efficient database that supported the overall functionality of the HIMSS Accelerate platform.
To improve the search functionality of the HIMSS Accelerate platform, our team implemented Elastic Search. This technology was integrated into the onboarding, search page, and profile editing which increased the existing site speed tenfold. The implementation of Elastic Search allowed users to quickly and easily find the information they were looking for, an exponential improvement for the platform’s digital experience.
We redesigned the menu bar of the HIMSS Accelerate platform to align with the new design system and brand guidelines. We restructured the information architecture to increase the platform’s intuitiveness and planning for growth when they need to add more categories. This redesign helped improve the navigation and user experience of the platform.
Our engineering team played a key role in the maintenance of the HIMSS Accelerate platform, solving bug tickets, and spearheading internal campaigns to increase network speeds across the application. They performed audits of the platform to identify necessary upgrades, resolved issues on the site, and researched system architecture best practices. This maintenance helped ensure the platform's reliability and stability before the platform’s launch at the global conference, providing a seamless digital experience for users.
To increase user engagement on the HIMSS Accelerate platform, our team implemented a likes feature that allowed users to like a particular item, see the like count, and find out who liked an item. This feature made the platform more interactive and encouraged users to engage more with the content and other users on the platform.
To automate the selection process for city, country, and state, our team utilized a React library that remembers information based on the user's previous inputs. The autocomplete function helped make the onboarding process more efficient and user-friendly, as users could easily select their location without having to manually type it in each time.
A key objective of the project was to migrate their previous design to a new design system. Our engineering team worked closely with the HIMSS design team to transition the existing app designs to the new cohesive system.
Storybook was used by the team to organize and visualize different variations of the components, which aided the healthcare app development process. It was an important tool for the team to ensure the consistency and maintainability of the design elements of the platform.
Perpetual integrated an eLearning experience on the HIMSS Accelerate platform, allowing healthcare professionals to access educational resources and learn about new technologies, best practices, and more. The eLearning experience was designed to be interactive, engaging, and tailored to the specific needs of the healthcare community. This feature helped enhance the overall value of the platform by providing healthcare professionals with valuable resources to improve their knowledge and skills.
For eLearning app development services, Open edX is an industry standard and it was the underlying LMS (Learning Management System) platform used for this product. A few key features of the digital solution included: Course Catalog, Course Status, Partner Courses, SCORM Support, Assessments, Certificates, and more.
Our engineering team was responsible for creating an AWS infrastructure for the HIMSS Open edX Instance. AWS was the infrastructure provider that supported the development, testing, and production environments. The infrastructure enabled students to view courses and enroll using the LMS URL, and instructors to post courses on Studio using the CMS URL.
We organized the e-courses to meet international standards using SCORM (Shareable Content Object Reference Model) and stored them on an EBS (Elastic Block Store) volume. The media files for the courses were kept on an S3 bucket with CloudFront distribution for faster access. Course data and forum discussions were stored on MongoDB and deployed on an EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) instance. User and insights data were stored on RDS (Relational Database Service). This infrastructure ensured scalable, reliable, and secure services, handling high traffic volumes during peak usage.
HIMSS launched Accelerate in time for its Global Conference in August 2021. With the improvements to their eLearning digital experience, they onboarded several learning partners with contributing content and now offer online certifications through the platform.
The application has a growing audience of thousands of users across the globe, serving as a destination for professionals to connect with peers in their industry outside of the HIMSS global conference. Platform-wide upgrades prompted respected healthcare institutions, thought leaders, and decision-makers to join Accelerate.
