Client

Our client works with care providers, selling a SaaS-based AgeTech platform that improves the well-being of nursing home residents. The platform connects the residents, their families, caregivers, and service providers. It helps residents live a more fulfilling life by nurturing meaningful social interactions with people inside and outside their community. It also drives operational efficiency and revenue growth for care providers.

We specialize in resident experience platform development for senior living, ensuring innovative solutions that enhance care and engagement.

The project helped the client become the International AgeTech StartUp of the Year 2022. But this all started with an idea the client approached us with in 2019. We took it all the way from a raw concept to a fully deployed solution available in five countries.

Challenges

When the client first contacted us, their award-winning project was just an idea. So, our key challenge was to help the client transform this idea into a full-fledged B2B SaaS for senior living as quickly as possible.

We provided an end-to-end resident experience platform solution, addressing all aspects of development to deliver a comprehensive and impactful platform.

We not only completed this task but also built trust with the client, transitioning from one of several outsourcing vendors to the key development partner. Here’s how our role was evolving throughout the development process:

  • 2019–2021: Startup stage
    In the first stage of our cooperation, the development effort was led by the client company’s founders, who acted as ideators and managers. The goal was to build and launch an MVP for the SaaS-based senior living telecom platform within the shortest timeframe. To reach it, the client relied on multiple outsourcing vendors, including Exoft.
  • 2021–2022: Product functionality development stage
    In 2021, the client’s company opted to maintain its collaboration exclusively with Exoft. So, we transitioned away from the external vendor role and became integral to the client’s core team. As the client navigated the business aspects, like securing funding, we took full responsibility for the implementation, documentation, and process improvement.

    During this period, the client’s product transitioned from a basic MVP to a complex, feature-rich SaaS platform. Our team integrated all the features seamlessly within a short timeframe.
  • 2023–now: Tailoring functionality to users’ needs
    In 2023, the client’s SaaS platform experienced a surge in users, highlighting diverse customer needs. Some care providers would rather have the scope limited to the functions they actually use, while others require extra features. This shift has reinforced our expertise in elderly care platform development, ensuring the solution caters to a wide range of user requirements. Ever since, our focus has shifted from “the product owner thinks it’s a good idea to implement this feature” to “this user needs this function.”

Features

When developing this SaaS-based elderly care platform, we considered the needs of three distinct user categories: the residents, the families, and the caregivers. Given that, the scope of work covered three main modules:

  • MyHub (a solution for residents)
  • FamilyHub (a solution for families)
  • StaffHub (a solution for the care provider’s staff)

Each module includes the most sought-after features tailored to each user category.

Features for residents and families:

  • Integrated chat and video calling: Residents and families can easily contact staff, friends, and relatives through the senior-friendly user interface featuring chat, video calls, and image sharing.
  • Calendaring and lifestyle coordination: Residents can use customizable calendars, lifestyle lists, and easily accessible schedules to plan their social activities.
  • Fully automated visitor scheduling: Family members can plan and schedule their visits, saving valuable staff time and increasing everyone’s satisfaction.
  • Maintenance and service requests: Residents can submit maintenance requests with just a few clicks.
  • Additional services and gifting: With the click of a button, residents and family members can pay for various services, such as customized TV packages, housekeeping, or salon treatments. Families can gift these services to their loved ones.

Features for nursing home staff:

  • Integrated chat and video calling: Staff can securely share information using the in-app chat feature.
  • Maintenance and service requests: The staff instantly receives any maintenance requests sent by residents, which increases productivity, efficiency, and resident satisfaction.
  • Survey center: Staff can create surveys, send them directly to residents and families, publish and review results, and share critical information to promote efficiency, resident wellness, and positive reviews.
  • Powerful reporting and analytics: The system collects data from each module to make reporting and predictive healthcare easier, empowering the caregiver staff to make better decisions. They can quickly generate quality reports and compare their performance to that of other care centers.
  • Third-party integration: The platform integrates with customer relationship management (CRM) software and other programs and systems essential to nursing home management and positive resident experience.

Next step: Upcoming features:

  • VoiceAssist to introduce an AI-trained voice assistant that helps residents interact with their loved ones and staff more easily.
  • Content aggregation from multiple sources, including Eldercate, Spiro100, CoroHealth, SilverMemories, and Wowzitude.
  • Nurse call system integration to notify team members whenever their assistance is needed.

Scope of work

To support the client’s business goals, we delivered these three modules as a mobile app for residents and families and a web app for caregivers. The platform also incorporated several third-party integrations. Additionally, we leveraged our expertise to build an experience management platform for seniors, ensuring it met the diverse needs of all stakeholders. Here’s a high-level overview of our scope of work:

Results

We developed the project from the concept stage to a fully released SaaS platform, coming up with multiple initiatives to streamline the client’s business processes. Aside from the speedy development of new features and product customization driven by end-user requests, our main contributions include:

Improvement of the QA process

To ensure that QA fully covers the entire cloud-based platform, our team suggested automating the process as much as possible. Previously, the client relied on manual testing only. To assist this transition, we created over 1,000 test catalogs, migrated to Case.io for manual test runs, and incorporated monitoring and checking tools. The product is now using automation testing, with limited manual tests.

Streamlined development process

We started having daily status checkups instead of retro sprint backlog planning and backlog grooming to make the development process more efficient. Informal coffee tech meetings, TechTalks about best practices, and recurrent events such as BugMonday or Documentation Tuesday also enhance coordination and teamwork.

Code refactoring

The project was initially developed through a combined effort of many vendors and freelancers, so its code was a mixture of styles and full of redundancies that could crash the product or slow it down. To improve the code quality, our team initiated the refactoring week every three-week sprint.

Moving from tablet to mobile

The client’s cloud-based platform was originally designed for tablet users. However, as the active user base increased rapidly in late 2022, it turned out that most users were accessing the platform from iOS-based mobile devices. We adopted a non-standard technical solution to migrate the platform from tablet to mobile in just two weeks.