Cloud Clinic
From brand-new app to acquisition in 25 months
CloudClinic was the working title of a startup that became Medeo, a telehealth app that went from concept to cutting-edge disruptor. A great team of doctors, design from MetaLab, and innovative product strategy made for an unparalleled patient experience.
The challenge
CloudClinic was a brand-new startup with enormous plans to transform the patient experience. They wanted to harness the cutting-edge video-conferencing features newly available in web-browsers (WebRTC) so they could deliver telemedicine with a zero-install setup.
Doing telemedicine via the browser had great potential to disrupt the market on cost and convenience. They had some doctors onboard and a business plan — but no technology, and no developers.
What we did
Working with ReverbHQ, we built a rapport with the founder and through conversation developed a list of prioritized user stories. We used a design-led process of simple paper-and-pencil prototypes. Using these during initial user-testing allowed us to learn fast without much expense. From there, we delivered a bare-bones prototype and then iterated using agile software development methodologies.
This allowed Cloud Clinic to create the right features and bring their big vision to fruition.
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Ruby on Rails
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PostgreSQL
How it turned out
Patients loved it. The tech allowed patients to get a prescription renewed easily from their desks at work. Suddenly patients could have brief chats with their doctors via video conference and have their prescription faxed immediately to a pharmacy for pick up.
This tech also gave the patient a record of the doctor’s recommendations and a history of their prescriptions in their online account. As you can imagine, this was much better an experience than needing to take an entire afternoon off work to refill a prescription.
The project went on to become Medeo, a Ruby on Rails app that lets you talk to your doctor over a video conference (via WebRTC) with a light-weight integrated electronic health record.
Our principal Weston Triemstra joined Medeo for a time to lead the engineering team and then be the product manager. There, he established a great rapport with a medical advisory team of BC’s most visionary doctors.
Medeo was Winner Small Business BC Most innovative company, Ready to rocket 2014, and Next25 at DigiBC. Medeo was acquired by QHR (TSX.QHR) Nov 10, 2014, and then QHR was acquired by Loblaw Companies Ltd in Oct 13, 2016. This outcome validates the sophisticated tech at the core of Cloud Clinic, and the significant changes it generated in the healthcare space.