The ability for patients to manage their healthcare remotely became increasingly important because of the 2019 global pandemic

VitalAire, a leading provider of healthcare services, and its parent company, Air Liquide, recognized an opportunity to improve the patient experience through the digitization of medical supply refills. To accomplish this goal, VitalAire turned to EPAM to develop a commerce-enabled next-generation patient portal that would support its patients who need lifelong care to manage their diabetes.

Following the launch of the solution, VitalAire’s patients were able to remotely manage their treatments and easily reorder supplies without leaving the comfort of their home. EPAM and VitalAire also enhanced the patient journey by revitalizing the existing website, implementing commerce functionality and adding features to the platform to improve the overall user experience.

In 2020, VitalAire and EPAM were recognized when the organizations received an Acquia Engage Award in the “Building a Better Tomorrow” category.

Key Challenges

Prior to creating the patient portal, VitalAire had no digital touchpoint for patients and customers. Back-office teams—primarily working through call centers and separate offline processes—faced high call volume, repetitive tasks and general process inefficiencies, which ultimately impacted customer satisfaction. An eCommerce integration was also needed, as VitalAire had no existing commerce solution in place.

To attract new customers, improve the patient journey and ensure a user-friendly experience, VitalAire needed to create a digital platform that would enable customers to order refills and supplies online and offer superior features and functionality, enhancing the user experience for all site visitors.

Given the upcoming release of an innovative new insulin pump product, VitalAire needed to move quickly to bring this new patient portal to market before its competition did the same. As a result, VitalAire tasked EPAM with implementing the solution in just five weeks. 

Solution Highlights

LAUNCHING VITALAIRE’S NEW PATIENT PORTAL IN FIVE WEEKS

EPAM worked quickly with VitalAire to conduct a discovery workshop and kickoff planning for the first phase of the initiative. Drupal was selected as the content management system (CMS) due to VitalAire’s familiarity with the platform and because of its cost, flexibility and contributed module ecosystem that lent itself to both the rapid implementation period as well as planned future enhancements. For the commerce functionality, commercetools was selected for its ease of integration with Drupal, powerful APIs, strong data security and excellent performance due to its microservice architecture. EPAM advised VitalAire to host the solution on the Acquia Cloud Platform because it provides many benefits and delivers comprehensive Drupal infrastructure support.

The new VitalAire patient portal with its prescription-based ordering tool was completed and launched on time and within budget in May 2020. Patients can now remotely manage their diabetes treatments and easily reorder supplies from home.

ENHANCING THE PATIENT EXPERIENCE

Following the implementation of the patient portal that enabled online sales of the insulin pump, the second phase of the project extended the eShop and its commerce capabilities to incorporate other therapy areas and included a full visual redesign of the existing web portal, further improving the end-to-end user experience.

The Results

With both phases of the project complete, patients can now remotely manage their treatments with ease and purchase devices and accessories online–not only for diabetes, but across five additional VitalAire therapeutic areas as well. A full visual redesign offers enhancements that improve the patient journey, including a new and easily navigable home page. A convenient unified navigation menu enables visitors to view all available VitalAire therapies and associated products, with dedicated sections for news, events, media, information, user libraries and more to further promote education and awareness.

EPAM continues to partner with VitalAire Germany on its mission to improve patient care while evolving and enhancing the platform.

Technologies Used

• HEAR FROM THE CUSTOMER

Hannes Frank
Head of Marketing and Product Management, VitalAire, GmbH