Building a Software Program That Integrates Medical Data

Goal

They turned to Bitcraft (currently Netguru) to help them create a software that integrates medical data, regardless of the source. They wanted to build a reliable application for hospitals across the country that would consolidate documentation from many different medical systems. The major challenges included:

• Competing with well-established companies, which have already deployed medical systems in hospitals.
• Complying with standards such as XDS or HL7, which were not very familiar and clear.
• Integrating documentation from many different sources and standardizing them into consistent formats.
• Tight deadlines.

Process

As developers from the Bitcraft (Netguru) team had had previous experience with working on medical-related projects, the client decided to partner with us. Once we learned all the specifications and project requirements, we started working on the software in the SCRUM model, which enabled fast iterations and closer collaboration with the client.

Here are some of the most important solutions implemented by the team that facilitated the delivery of a high-quality product:

• Choosing the optimal stack for fast development: Python with the Django framework for the backend and Knockout.js, and later Angular.js, for the frontend.
• Standardizing documentation from different sources into the HL7 CDA v2 or v3 format.
• Following the openEHR data modelling approach.
• Building endpoints for many different systems and parsing their documents.
• Creating a printer driver for Windows to “print” documents into the HL7 CDA format directly from a text editor.

Results

The team worked on the project for 2 years, however, the first iteration of the system was released only 4 months after the kickoff. The medical software created in cooperation with our team has been deployed in over 40 hospitals all over Poland.

The team managed to integrate the documentation from many different medical systems. The system is working in many hospitals still today. The major achievements included:

• Delivering a quality product within tight deadlines imposed by other stakeholders.
• Integrating over 10 different sources of documentation into one reliable system.
• Implementing the software in 44 medical institutions across Poland.
• The product drew the attention of private institutions, and a well-known Polish startup created their system based on the provided solution.

Numbers