Nurses in 80+ Facilities Welcomed a Hospital App with Offline Features

About Our Client

The Client is an Austrian healthcare group with 81 healthcare facilities across the country.

Challenge

The Client had troubles with their existing web-based solution for nurses. Since some parts of the Client’s hospitals had poor internet connection, the functionality of the online web app was unstable. A nurse could input data in the fields, then click on Submit and get a notification about disconnection, which meant the loss of all the previously entered information. To resolve the issue, the Client needed to develop a mobile solution that would have the web app’s most essential functionality and be fully available offline.

Also, the web application had basic UI, and the Client didn’t want to have it reused in a mobile solution. At the same time, they didn’t want the design to be changed too much, as it would make it difficult for the nurses to get used to navigating the mobile app.

Solution

ScienceSoft’s designers strived to create an eye-appealing UI with transparent and self-explanatory navigation to make the mobile app easy to get the hang of from day one. Once the Client approved the design, the iOS development team proceeded to create a mobile app for iPad, implementing the part of the web app’s functionality pointed out by the Client.

As requested by the Client, the mobile app functions entirely offline. Every change in the app made by a nurse is saved locally on a device. Then, once a minute, all changes are synchronized with the back end and become available to other nurses.

The mobile app currently includes 5 menus:

• Reminders – a starting point for every nurse; the menu shows a list of appointments with their specific type and procedures to perform.
• Resident List – displays all vital data in neat graphs and shows each patient’s individual care and exercise plans, personal information, as well as care reports (comments on a patient’s condition made by caregivers throughout their hospital stay).
• Medications – the name and intake regularity of medications prescribed to each patient in the list.
• Care Plans – detailed textual care information for each patient in the list.
• Inbox – text messages from colleagues.

All menus except ‘Inbox’ have a ‘Filter’ option that allows a nurse to view only certain groups of patients (for instance, residents of a specific part of the hospital or those with a certain condition).

Results

The Client was completely satisfied with how ScienceSoft solved the offline functionality challenge. The new design was also warmly welcomed by the nurses who found it easy to get used to.

Since the current app version has nearly 50% of all the features available in the web solution, the Client has already requested the development of the update with the rest of the features.

Technologies and Tools

iOS SDK 12, Swift 4, UIKit, SQLite, SQLCipher, Alamofire, REST.