How a leading Telecare provider accelerated the state of the art
The digitalization of medical services is going through a strong growth phase. Undeniably boosted by the coronavirus pandemic, we are observing an ever-increasing need of patients for flexible medical consultations, regardless of time and place. Telemedicine, or Telecare, comprehends a large part of remote medical services, providing contact, care, and consultation between patients and physicians over the telephone and other digital channels.
Medgate established its first “Medgate Tele Clinic” in Switzerland in 2000 and has been providing healthcare in the largest physician-based telemedicine center in Europe since then. Besides Switzerland, Medgate operates centers in Abu Dhabi, the Philippines, and recently launched their services in Germany.
The recent development of a custom Patient Management System enabled the implementation of tailor-made processes to perform and document teleconsultations which in the end increase the quality of Medgate's services. Also, it provides Medgate with the ability to develop country-specific features and to integrate with various partners in the healthcare industry.
A global and modern PMS addressing country specific requirements
In joint collaboration, Medgate and OWT developed a tailor-made Patient Management System called “PMS GLOBAL”, that covers all main features expected by a leading PMS solution:
Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
Eg. Patient management, business intelligence
Electronic Medical Records (EMR)
Eg. diagnosis, medication, treatment plans
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)
Appointment scheduling, operational shift management
A system that fully integrates Medgate's consultation and partner channels
A system that fully integrates Medgate's consultation channels
Medgate's touchpoints diversified from simple phone calls to a mobile app and a web portal. All touchpoints are now integrated in the PMS GLOBAL functional landscape.
Pharmacies
A prescription generated in the PMS GLOBAL is signed electronically and directly transferred to the patient mobile app where the patient can select a pharmacy nearby.
User experience and productivity
The PMS GLOBAL provides a modern and sophisticated user interface (UI) allowing efficient high quality medical services. Applying user-centered design techniques has resulted in an interface in which doctors can see a patient medical history in a glance. Furthermore, the PMS GLOBAL incorporates a number of tools and templates, enabling doctors to document teleconsultations and produce documents such as prescriptions, sick leave certificates and letters of referral efficiently.
Patient Dossier Overview
During a teleconsultation, the doctor can see a patient's medical data at a glance on the medical dashboard, where the interaction history is visualized in a “lifeline”.
Care quality support
Eg. by displaying medication warnings or interactions between medications.
Digital prescription and signature
When generating a prescription, the doctor can use an integrated functionality to sign the document electronically.
Thanks to seamless integration in the mobile app, the patient then gets his digital prescription directly transferred to his medical documents in a secure manner. The patient can then complete the process by selecting his preferred pharmacy in the app, where he can then directly pick up his medications.
Modular and cloud based architecture to address Medgate's requirements
PMS GLOBAL is a web-based application with cloud-native architecture. Its modular approach allows Medgate to address a new market and incorporate country specific requirements and regulations quickly. PMS GLOBAL therefore plays a crucial role in Medgate's ambitions to expand and adapt rapidly all around the world.
Solution architecture
PMS GLOBAL is a tailor-made solution, with:
- Single-page web user interface
- Microservices for Business logic implemented on Microsoft .NET Core
- Third party business solutions integration
Deployment architecture
Hosting can be on-premise or in the cloud and specific settings can be applied for each country:
- Same code base with different configuration
- Deployment with data isolation in application runtime
- Centralized access and user management
- Centralized monitoring, IT and customer service
Iterative Journey
Since 2019, Open Web Technology has been working with Medgate as a cross-company team on the development of the PMS GLOBAL solution. For this, we have resorted to our company's unique approach, which consists in creating blueprints on dedicated topics and developing software following an agile methodology. From the beginning, we have collaborated closely with Medgate's doctors and service providers in order for us to understand each of their needs and to create a digital working environment which allows them to consult and manage patients effectively and successfully. For this, we applied our user-centered approach, which includes work-shadowing sessions with doctors and call center agents as well as user testing sessions using clickable prototypes. The overarching goal is always to provide high quality medical care in an efficient manner.
