Evidence-based self-triage instrument

Project Background

Sibers was tasked by an experienced family doctor and medical entrepreneur to create an online version of a symptom-based, self-diagnostic tool of his creation.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, around 65% of American citizens have health insurance that’s either employment-based or self-purchased. Hence, the number of organizations interested in saving costs while continuing to provide their employees with health insurance is big enough for a “self-triage” online business to thrive. After all, every doctor’s visit that can be avoided means a savings in the hundreds of dollars range.

Moreover, self-diagnosis is incredibly helpful in emergency situations — for example, when calling 911, exchanging information efficiently when time is of the essence often means the difference between life and death.

Solution

Sibers provided a two-part solution: a front-end, symptoms-based web application for self-triage, and a back-end administrative panel for user and content management. The front-end is a responsive website accessible on various devices. Users log their chief complaint and then follow a decision tree which prompts them to answer several questions, which ultimately lead to professional recommendations. Connecting with a specialist is just a click away — and since privacy is always respected, the specialist can quickly access the user’s medical history and correctly assess the situation.

An Automatic Error Reporting system and a Tenants system (with independent domains and user management tools) are built-in as well. In creating the back-end system, Sibers provided a customized version of Orchard, a device-agnostic CMS which enables creation of user charts and medication/dosage charts, along with decision tree management.

Tech highlights

• Microsoft .NET Framework (C#)
• ASP.NET MVC
• WCF
• Entity Framework
• Orchard CMS
• Microsoft SQL Server
• Microsoft SQL Express
• HTML/CSS
• JavaScript
• jQuery

Results

Sibers created an online self-triage tool that’s simple to use, flexible and powerful, and it’s already netting returns for our client. We’re currently working on technical support and further refinements.