Download Easy Orthodontics Project Case Study 0.23Mb

Online B2B and B2C portals, the meeting places where service providers look for their potential clients, are known in the Internet for quite some time already. Such services are mainly organized in a form of reverse auctions that gather IT specialists or freelance translators. A similar workplace can be organized for other than IT spheres of professional life, for example, medical aid and in particular orthodontic treatment. This idea became the basis of Easy Orthodontics – a place where patients requiring treatment of their orthodontic illnesses are able to choose a most suitable clinic and specialists for them by location, price, experience and specialty.

As IT specialists use similar auction sites looking for the clients, Sibers team had a general idea of our clients' requirements. However, provision of medical services imposes certain specificity. Patients' health information is protected by law regulations and required additional security specified by governmental standards, as well as the information about payments made. These were the basic principles that were successfully realized.

Prior to launching the initial phase of Easy Orthodontics project development, our analysts conducted thorough research of online auctions of various services, in order to find out all details and rules of developing a similar auction website for medical services. We reviewed the existing solutions and compiled a list of necessary features and options to be developed.

Another step in our analysis was studying the legal side of providing medical services in the USA, including Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), and afterwards we studied how medical services were carried out in practice and what information on Healthcare Providers and their level of proficiency Patients required.

A number of features were to be realized to simplify the process of Patient-Doctors communication and to make it easier for clients and healthcare providers to find each other. First, we assigned user types and their rights and responsibilities. The portal contains three roles: Patient, Doctor (or a Healthcare Provider) and Credit Provider.

Patients start using the portal after registration. The process implies filling out the questionnaire drawn up by our analysts together with the client. These completed forms should help Doctors get an initial idea of the patient's state of health. The task was to get as much information as possible without annoying the Patient. After successful registration, Patients are suggested to post their first complaint, where they are supposed to indicate the person in the need of treatment, who can be either Patients themselves, or their relatives. Then they choose the area of medicine the problem refers to – from a dropdown list of medical areas; also an additional field is available to describe the problem at a greater length. After this, the Patient should specify the distance (in miles) they are willing to travel to get the service. Also the Patient may want to upload some files like digital photos or X-rays data via a secure HIPAA compliant Internet connection. This information cannot be downloaded or saved from the site for security reasons. The posted problem cannot be edited, only updating is permitted in order to exclude the situation of Patient-Provider misunderstandings. When Healthcare Providers bid on a complaint, the Patient receives a notification by e-mail or a private message and can accept or deny the Doctor's offer. There is a possibility to sort problems according to their status (new, updated, accepted, closed or expired), number of offers, distance in miles to the Doctor, min bid and max bid. When an offer is accepted, the Patient can write a feedback and make rating for the particular Healthcare Provider.

The next step of business analysis was to investigate the aspects and peculiarities of Doctor profiles. Each Healthcare Provider account has to be approved by the system – Doctors' credentials are checked with regional state Medical Boards. When creating an account, Doctor is to fill in a form that contains such fields as the Doctor's real name, the name of the organization they belongs to, their experience and majors (selecting them from a dropdown menu) and contact information including all addresses. The majors should correspond to areas of medicine the Patient problems can refer to in order to simplify the process of searching for Patients and Doctors. Furthermore, the feedbacks and ratings from Patients are available on each Healthcare Provider account. Listing of all problems posted in the Doctor's area of specialization and their different sortings are available for registered and approved Healthcare Providers. Doctors can place offers for problems of their competence and if their offer is accepted they will receive a notification via e-mail or PMB. When the offer is accepted, all related data is unlocked for the selected Provider and can be downloaded. Also, all registered Doctors sign a non-disclosure agreement.

One more registration form was created for Credit Providers who serve Patients if the latter require to make a loan. Credit Providers should be able to place their service ads on the site describing their terms and conditions, pricing and the sums they can offer to Patients.

It is significant that all private information be secured to the highest degree, including that on Healthcare Providers. Sibers analysts decided that no details of Provider's offers should be available except for the total number of offers and maximum and minimum bid values. That would make the system more beneficial to Patients and keep their costs to a minimum.

Regarding terms of payment for the service, we had a lengthy discussion with the client and decided to implement the following system of fees:

• Providers should submit a registration fee and fees for each successful deal Provider carried out on the portal;
• Providers should submit monthly subscription fee for using the portal.

It was decided that Patient will be free of any fees except for the commission collected from each successful transaction conducted between Patient and Credit Providers.

For secure reasons we implemented PayPal integration.

Security measures also influence private message boards: we included two variants of them. One is associated with a particular problem and refers to a Problem and the Offer, and the second helps to collect all the messages on all the Offers.

Usability and ease of navigation on the portal increases with the use of the Site Search Engine, which helps to find Providers and Patients by various parameters.

Competent analysis at pre-development stage and development of an efficient Graphical User Interface made it possible to realize our client's idea for the benefit of Patients, Doctors and Loan Providers.

We used a similar approach of cooperation between our technical and business analysts, the client and developers in our subsequent projects, when we took an active part in helping clients to work out business strategies regarding the future life of their projects. A lot of projects the company works on are not simple solutions but projects requiring deep insight in IT industry as well as business analysis and innovative ideas related to the project's future implementation. The client may have just a vague idea of the project, and Sibers team will build a sensible and, what is more important, a profitable solution by the term agreed.