Behavioral Health Application Designed to Alleviate Depression Symptoms
The Client
The client offers innovative technology solutions for behavioral health monitoring and treatment. The computer-guided solutions offered by the client provide video-based interactive programs that allow users to connect with a virtual therapist. The solution provides convenience, privacy, and autonomy of a digital application and is highly interactive and engaging providing a very personalized user experience.
The Challenge
The application uses over 200 audio and 150 video files for providing an interactive session to the client with minimal reading. Along with this, PHQ-9 is implemented for conducting user surveys. PHQ-9 is a self-administered questionnaire for monitoring the severity of depression and response to treatment.
To support multimedia, the solution was built on Adobe Director. Lingo, an Object-Oriented scripting language, was used to develop the software. However, Adobe Director is an outdated platform and has limitations in catering to the needs of today’s changing user requirements.
The desktop-based nature of the application made it difficult for the client team to monitor users remotely. As the user base increased, it created more stress on services offered, affecting the scalability of the solution. Also, the legacy system lacked a functional and aesthetic design structure and code organization, resulting in making changes to the software cost-intensive and difficult.
Our Solution
Considering the above factors, Experion proposed re-engineering the solution using digital technologies. At the initial stage, a team of business analysts conducted an extensive study and gathered detailed project requirements. A report was prepared and submitted to the client team to evaluate Experion’s understanding of the project scope. Upon receiving a go-ahead from the client, the development phase was initiated. SCRUM methodology of Agile development was followed for development. But the process was not without challenges.
Many built-in algorithms that formed the core of the application had evolved. The client did not want to lose these algorithms while redeveloping the solution. However, the developers of the legacy system were no longer available to verify, provide documentation, or explain algorithms. The only source, therefore, was the existing software code.
The Experion team took on the task of deciphering the existing codebase and understanding underlying algorithms. Experion technology experts studied the codebase and created detailed workflow documents, which were verified with subject matter experts from the client-side.
A web-based solution was developed in React JS, to improve user experience. Existing audio and video files with improved resolution were used to enhance user experience.
Features
One of the fundamental features of the application is to provide tailored responses to users by managing multiple workflows. A ‘State-machine’ is used to drive workflows and screens, thereby arriving at an accurate response to the user inputs.
User engagement and retention is a vital part of the client business model. It takes 6 weeks for a user to complete a course from initial enrollment until the final survey. To encourage participation and ensure user retention, the application offers many functionalities, such as notifying a user on impending sessions and session scheduling among others.
Business Impact
- The new system architecture is highly scalable.
- The new system is highly modular. New features and updates could be added without affecting the core functionality
- Saves the client over 75k a year on infrastructure costs
- Reduced average request per day from 1.48M to 990K
- Average DTU consumption is reduced from 60% to 4%