Unimed Curitiba - Mobile Medical Guide

CLIENT
Unimed Curitiba

 
AREA
Health Care

 
PROBLEM
Unimed Curitiba needed to migrate its catalog of service providers from paper to mobile in an integrated manner with the existing systems and using resources from all types of mobile devices.

 
SOLUTION
Visionnaire helped in the solution, designing the Mobile Medical Guide architecture, and deploying it, in an innovative way, in all application stores of device suppliers. This is integrated with the current Unimed Curitiba systems.

 
RESULTS
With the new Mobile Medical Guide, Unimed Curitiba has greatly reduced the costs of producing paper catalogs, since previously the guide was made on paper and placed in phone books. Unimed Curitiba also increased productivity, allowed information to always be 100% updated and served its customers so that everyone could have access to the Medical Guide, even when on the move.

 
TECHNOLOGY
Due to the requirements of running on all mobile device platforms and in a way that was integrated with Unimed's current management systems, a distributed solution based on Application Server on the server with applications on the client was designed, communicating via the Web Services and the Unimed Communication Protocol.

 
Java language was used on the server, running GlassFish, from Oracle (originally from Sun Microsystems). The database is Oracle. The applications were developed using PhoneGap/Cordova, allowing portability between manufacturers and models. JQuery UI Mobile, Google Maps integration API and SQLite database on the application side were also used. The integrations performed were with the Oracle database and the Benner management system.

 

 
Detailed problem:
With the increasing adoption of mobile devices, Unimed Curitiba noticed that more and more of its clients were connected via smartphones. Besides this is the fact that paper catalogues are less and less used. Therefore, the Unimed Doctors Catalog, which historically was made in a large compendium and later attached to city guides and telephone books, became a great candidate to be migrated to a mobile solution. The Unimed Mobile Medical Guide was born.

 
The problem was to migrate this entire catalog in an integrated manner with Unimed Curitiba's internal management systems to the internet, enabling access to such catalog through applications on mobile devices.

 
An important requirement was that the application should be compatible with all major platforms at the time (Apple iOS, Google Android, BlackBerry OS, and Microsoft Windows Phone), in addition to also working on the web, with the same code base.

 
Other important requirements were that the data of providers linked to Unimed Curitiba (doctors, hospitals, clinics, laboratories, diagnostic centers, home caregivers, emergency care and emergency rooms) should be integrated with the Unimed Curitiba management system in a way that were always updated.

 
In the case of providers who served within a certain schedule, that schedule should appear in the application. Finally, there was a requirement to show the provider's location on the map, capturing the customer's geolocation and plotting a route on how to get there. All of this in an integrated way with all cell phones.

 
Detailed solution:
Visionnaire was a key player in the design, development, and implementation of the solution. The Unimed Curitiba Mobile Medical Guide is currently present in all application stores (Apple's App Store; Google's PlayStore; BlackBerry World and Microsoft Store), in addition to being on the internet. It was one of the first medical guide solutions in Brazil, being a reference for other Unimed units throughout the country.

 
Given the requirement to run on all platforms, a solution designed on a Java-based application server was designed. Communication with applications on each client is done via Web Services. The application was developed on a technology-independent platform (device-independent), which is PhoneGap/Cordova. Integration with Unimed Curitiba's management system and databases was done via Java components and the application server.

 
Thus, with just one code base, it was possible to offer the solution to all Unimed Curitiba customers, regardless of which device a customer uses. This without compromising the performance of the application, as the solution also uses optimizations for the native code of each device where necessary. All of this allowed for a great productivity gain in the development, reducing costs and allowing the maintenance of only one source code base.

 
System Link
Link for use via Web Browser:

 
https://www.unimedcuritiba.com.br

 
Link to news
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4pHn0AFMDY