On-Demand Care Assistance System Development

• Project: Development of a mobile app for requesting care assistance services
• Duration: 2+ years
• Technologies: Firebase, Redmine, Swift
• Target audience: Senior citizens

The Client provides digital tools and resources to allow elderly people and their families to schedule on-demand care. With its people-first attitude, the company helps beat the challenges that come with aging by offering the same day care or short-term assistance.

Challenge

It was important to keep in mind that the target audience of the application is elderly people. They are active or semi-active seniors having access to a cell phone or desktop and requiring some assistance.

In that regard, the Client wanted to make sure both user flow and UI avoid complex gestures and visual elements. All interactions with the app had to be simple, clear, and easy to understand, leaving the app’s users with a positive experience.

Read more about the UI/UX of Healthcare Apps

Process

On-Demand Care Assistance iOS App Development

Once the project idea was validated, our team started to work on building an iOS app as it was decided to deliver a solution for this platform first. Majorly, the development process included the implementation of the two core pillars:

• Customer functionality
• Caregiver functionality

Given strict regulations in healthcare app development, it was essential for the application to follow HIPAA requirements. Thus, data privacy and security were of utmost importance. All personal information processed by the app had to be safe and never shared without explicit consent.

Read more about HIPAA-Compliant App Development

According to the Client’s request and general product concept, Velvetech elaborated user-friendly UI/UX. It incorporated large icons and fonts, enhanced accessibility, and step-by-step instructions to ensure a seamless experience across every interaction with the app.

Customer Functionality

To accommodate the Client’s requirements, our team developed the functionality that allowed customers to easily use the application and request services.

First, we implemented sign-up and log-in features to enable access to the application, password recovery, and authentication through a verification code.

The next step was to provide users with the ability to create and edit their profiles. Customers can fill out and manage personal data like name, email, address, and date of birth; add profile picture; choose a service area. They can also set up push notifications and change them whenever it’s needed.

The app’s core functionality is centered around selecting and requesting help. Thus, it offers seniors a consistent way of moving across the process. Users can see the dashboard of available services to choose from. They can go through caregivers’ profiles, review and download terms of services, schedule a service for a particular date & time, and monitor status changes.

Caregiver Functionality

The caregiver’s part was another side of the application to build in order to complete the mobile solution.

Comparable to the customers’ actions, healthcare providers can create profiles, edit the list of services they offer, manage requests and assignees, and monitor statuses.

On top of that, the caregiver app’s functionality allows for setting up email alerts and status update triggers, receiving push notifications, sending messages to customers right in the app, and tracking replies.

Since the solution basically represents a ticketing system, our team chose an open-source platform Redmine to allow the company to manage communities of caregivers.

This scalable tool is written with the Ruby on Rails framework and offers customized API that we extended to address the Client’s case. The company can add new care providers, manage locations, configure new fields if needed, and modify other settings — all this in a secure way.

After testing the application, Velvetech helped the Client roll out their product to the App Store. It quickly started to get positive feedback and support seniors in their daily activities — the goal the company was pursuing from the beginning.

Outcome

The result of our collaboration was the development of a new mobile app for both older adults and caregivers. It provides seniors with opportunities to request care services of any duration, even if it is 15, 30, or 60 minutes. A qualified caregiver is ready to respond the same day and come to the aid whenever it’s needed.

Ultimately, the application matches elderly people with the right service providers, offers real-time scheduling, and enables two-way communication. As a result, citizens of senior living communities can quickly receive the required help and spend more time living life their way.

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What’s Next

In order to support more seniors with a convenient solution to call for assistance, the Client and Velvetech’s team continue working together. The next step is to create an Android version of the app and adjust it for desktop usage. Thus, increasing the reach of the target audience.