MedKitDoc – The Future of Telemedicine & Remote Care in Germany

technologies

technologies: Kotlin, AWS-CDK, OpenTelemetry, MySQL

problem: increase in the population of elderly living alone

The story of MedKitDoc started before it was even founded. Its two co-founders were unable to assist their chronically ill grandmother living hundreds of miles away. Benjamin Gutermann, one of the co-founders and a doctor, found his skills ineffective over the distance. If only he could have listened to his grandmother's heart and checked her lung sounds. Ultimately, their grandmother had to be hospitalized, which they believed might have been avoided.

In Germany, the demographic trend indicates a significant increase in the population of elderly individuals, particularly those living alone. As of 2020, nearly 6 million people aged 65 or over were living alone, representing one in three people (34%) of that age group.

Remote patient monitoring and telehealth are essential for ensuring well-being and providing the necessary assistance before it's too late.

solution: telehealth application with integrated devices

MedKitDoc is paving the way in remote medical care in Germany by integrating certified medical devices, applications, and trained specialists into a comprehensive healthcare solution. This innovative approach has gained popularity in care homes, facilitating virtual appointments between patients and doctors who may be located far away.

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Patients use smart healthcare devices to monitor their vital signs, which are then transmitted to the doctor via the app. At the same time, doctors conduct real-time communication with patients through video calls, enabling the prompt initiation of appropriate treatment based on the medical data collected through the devices and the patient's consultation.

After experiencing several years of successful growth, the founders of MedKitDoc decided to seek assistance with backend development to ensure the ongoing expansion of their solution. They reached out to us, and we gladly kicked off this collaboration.

Our team is responsible for backend development and the infrastructure – the core of the system. In close partnership with our client, one of our colleagues from Bright Inventions takes on the role of a tech lead. Together, we oversee a development team comprising backend, mobile, and QA experts.

Through collaborative efforts with our client, MedKitDoc has undergone continuous improvement. New features like medical documentation storage and integrations with medical providers have been developed to enhance user experience. We also enhance existing features, including the scheduling of video appointments between doctors and patients, which has been a core function of MedKitDoc for years.

challenge: ensuring optimal performance and compliance with HIPAA, GDPR and TÜV

Faced with the challenge of ensuring optimal performance for MedKitDoc, we implemented a robust strategic solution – performance monitoring based on the OpenTelemetry standard, which provides our client with vital insights, including response time, peak usage periods, and resource utilization within the application. The primary aim is to proactively identify and address any potential performance issues, enabling swift interventions before they can impact the end-users' experience.

We have also helped to address the challenges of comprehensive business and marketing analytics by maintaining monitoring for crucial metrics like feature usage, including successful appointment count, the number of messages exchanged between patient and doctor, and the number of shared documents. The data serves as a valuable resource for the client's analytics team ensuring app optimizations are always based on solid and reliable data.

Securing healthcare solutions that store sensitive medical data, such as MedKitDoc, presents an additional challenge in ensuring compliance with HIPAA, GDPR and being eligible for German TÜV certification. To meet these requirements, it's essential to follow best security practices such as data encryption, and managing user access with tools like AWS Cognito, among many others.

Part of addressing this challenge involves software modernization. While our core responsibility is to deliver new features, we also play a crucial role in modernizing the current code and architecture. This includes updating libraries to comply with security standards, and ensuring that our solution remains secure and trustworthy for handling sensitive medical data.

result: increased access to medical care in Germany

MedKitDoc is changing telemedicine in Germany. By implementing new features and gathering data to understand users' needs, we proudly support their mission to increase access to medical care among people who are often left to manage on their own. Let's hope that remote patient care will soon be a widespread reality for older and chronically ill individuals.