_Dermatogenix+ Inc. Leverages Cloud Serverless and SaaS to Deliver Offerings Faster and with Predictable Costs

Dermatogenix+ Inc., in partnership with the registered Canadian non-profit Eczema Quebec, is dedicated to the development of mobile health (mHealth) tools for the adult atopic dermatitis community.

EczemaQ, a pilot mHealth app, provides remote care and personalized medicine, promoting shared decision-making and self-management. Co-developed by Dr. Carolyn Jack, an Associate Professor at McGill University in the Department of Dermatology and founder of the MUHC Center of Excellence for Atopic Dermatitis (MUHC COE AD), it features validated educational content addressing common patient queries.

Key initiatives include:

• Synthesizing validated, guideline-based information for digital delivery.
• Implementing strategies to involve patient partners, such as Eczema Quebec, throughout development stages, based on the Strategy for Patient-Oriented Research (CIHR). This includes co-development of the app and subsequent iterations.

Summary

TT PSC partnered with Dermatogenix+ Inc. to increase efficiency and agility:

• Accelerated Time-to-Market: Utilizing platforms and tools that enable faster, more agile and independent feature development, unblocking and unburdening developers from long multi-month launches into single sprint and even single day releases.

• Scalable costs model: Moving to 100% serverless and SaaS-based platforms with no minimum commitments and scalable “cheaper by the dozen” costing models. The same cost-efficient platform for 10 users in a study group will be the same platform with a cheaper per-user unit cost at 10,000 users.

• Adaptability to change: Providing medical professionals, researchers, business stakeholders, and developers with the ability to adapt the platform to customer needs and requirements with minimal effort or technical knowledge.

• Customer adaptability: Utilizing “write once, run many” technologies to support customer needs across a wide variety of mobile, tablet, and browser platforms.

Business Challenge

Atopic dermatitis (AD) is a complex and debilitating condition, often accompanied by other health issues like asthma and anxiety. Limited access to dermatologists, especially in Quebec, results in a backlog of patients seeking care. EczemaQ, an expert-backed app, aims to address these challenges by providing accurate information and empowering patients. Dermatogenix+ Inc. was established to bring EczemaQ to market, with a focus on improving the user experience and expanding collaboration.

They partnered with TT PSC to help them:

1. Improve application change cycle:

• Streamline UX/UI changes and overcome previous platform limitations for smoother workflows.
• Facilitate external collaborators’ contributions securely, with minimal training and overhead.
• Enable rapid prototyping of mockups with minimal development effort.

2. Provide scalable costs per user:

• Shift from fixed-cost, server-based platforms to scalable solutions.
• Utilize scalable technology that accommodates user growth without incurring additional expenses.
• Support multiple developers working independently with cost-effective, on-demand development environments.

3. Entice & attract interns & volunteers:

• Develop enticing technology processes to attract talent from academia who would not otherwise involve themselves in the projects.
• Choose technologies that provide a diverse “full stack” experience, enabling independent work for impactful changes and effective referencing.

And this is not a whole story!

If you want to learn more about Dermatogenix+ Inc. & TT PSC Success Story, download a specially prepared PDF file:

Our Solution

TT PSC collaborated with Dermatogenix+ Inc’s team to define technical and non-functional requirements and processes, configure an AWS serverless platform, integrate with GitHub and Figma, and provide/create a platform where all stakeholders are self-empowered to make appropriate changes in their environment, to experiment, and then deploy. TT PSC provided guidance and support from the initial design workshops through to the final release to help meet business objectives and provide technical assistance.

Tools utilized by TT PSC:

• AWS Amplify with React, including integration with AppSync, Cognito, and Figma
• GitHub for PR’s (Pull Request) to control production access, while giving developers collaborative flexibility within their own environments and shared feature branches, ensuring the privacy of customers’ medical data
• PWA and PWABuilder for mobile application creation and deployment.
• AWS offerings for operational tooling, including backups, basic monitoring, and notifications.

Results

Through the partnership with TT PSC, Dermatogenix+ Inc. has achieved significant milestones, including:

• Empowering stakeholders: The collaboration at all levels enables significant independent or collaborative impacts quickly. Streamlined processes have reduced implementation time from months to weeks.
• Cost efficiency:  Platform cost concerns are no longer significant. Development environments start at pennies to dollars per developer, and all technology choices scale with users. There are no unknown significant cost concerns or cost cliffs.
• Patient feedback: Due to the ease of development and deployment, researchers no longer have to pick and choose what they put in front of patients. They can put all options and let them interface and choose the best options during the research phase.
• Operational efficiency: Self-healing mechanisms and quick re-deployment by any developer with production access significantly improve operational efficiency. This minimizes disruptions, reduces failure points, and eliminates the need for heavy operational or SRE overhead.