Digital Healthcare Innovation – Case Study
Building a Next-Gen Healthcare Platform for Intellivisit
Background
As the healthcare industry and the technology landscape change, so does the way we see patients and involve them in their own care. Intellivisit, a Wisconsin-based startup, aimed to be on the cutting edge of this trend by modernizing the process for patients who want to see a physician. Intellivisit’s vision was to create a mobile platform for patients that would use an intelligent symptom checker and allow them to receive care without the hassles of a physical office visit. Symphony allowed Intellivisit to create a fully scalable product quickly and seamlessly despite minimum starting specifications.
This case study details the challenges and successes from building a scalable MVP (minimal viable product) for Intellivisit, an application that saves time and money through patient-facing mobile technology.
A Flexible Start to the MVP (Minimal Viable Product)
As a startup, the founders of Intellivisit faced two major challenges: first-to-market pressures with a tight budget and a complex idea that combined different software. Symphony aided them in building a complex minimum viable product (MVP) despite resource constraints.
Intellivisit planned to raise funding and build a prototype of their platform within eight months and a year, but found this difficult without complete specifications for their product. They decided to get an early start on building the platform by partnering with Symphony, whose milestone-based payment system enabled Intellivisit the flexibility to start software development with limited upfront costs. While Intellivisit focused on raising funds and finding a business analyst, Symphony leveraged their own healthcare expertise to get started on the MVP. With the early technical responsibilities taken off their plate, Intellivisit leaders were able to find a business analyst that could flesh out the remaining platform specifications, and Symphony was then able to deliver the MVP within a total of seven months—one month ahead of schedule.
Intellivisit’s vision was to bring the power of an office visit to a patient’s phone; doing so required a combination of software that would cover each step of the workflow. To build a fully integrated platform, Intellivisit leveraged Symphony’s expertise as a technology firm to evaluate and integrate over five different third-party tools necessary to piece together the solution. The final MVP covered each step of the office visit workflow using third-party tools ranging from MyHealthDirect for physical appointment booking to Authorize.net for fee collection. Symphony’s contributions covered also covered the importing of patient data—as well as the assignment of case logic and the configure of clinician workflows. Along the way, Symphony’s mature processes and unique approach to Agile software development and documentation allowed Intellivisit to modify workflows and incorporate feedback with minimal delays, resulting in a valuable platform for providers and patients.
Time to Market Advantage
“Symphony’s milestone-based payment model allowed us to preserve equity and get to the market at least a year early,” explained Jay Mason, Intellivisit’s President and Founder. Due to Symphony’s healthcare domain expertise and experience working with other innovative healthcare projects, Intellivist benefited from a distinct time-to-market advantage in a quickly-evolving telemedicine industry. With the MVP in hand, Intellivisit was able raise the capital they needed to grow—and justified a valuation four times higher than in the previous year.