Simposium

why so slow ???

What do we have to work with?

• Text Information supplied inside a database 
• Database in a proprietary format (microsoft)
• Available trough an old fashioned channel (ftp)
• No one tells us if there's an update
• No one tells us what changed

Use cases today

• I need a safe paracetamol for a lactating mother
   
• Does this simvastatin interacts with this paracetamol?

What's the best solution available today?

What's the best solution available today?

• I need a safe paracetamol for a lactating mother
  1. Select Simposium feature
  2. Search for the medicine
  3. View medicine details
  4. Select "interferences option"
  5. Look trough the text list

What's the best solution available today?

• Does this simvastatin interacts with this paracetamol
  1. Remember to check for medicine interactions
  2. Ask for patient for everything he his taking
  3. Mentally filter any potential dangerous interactions
  4. Select Simposium feature
  5. Search for the medicine
  6. View medicine details
  7. Select "interactions" option
  8. Look trough the text list and try to find the wanted dci

What's the best solution available today?

Hope that there was no simposium update since the last time I updated the software...

What's the linkedcare way?

Doctors don't even need to know simposium exists ...

• In the right place (context)
• Always up to date
• Informed
  (doctor's don't need to trust their patients memory)
• Pertinent
  (doctor's don't need to trust their own memory)

Up to date

• find there are changes
• find what's changed
• convert to a format supported by our infrastructure
• import into our infrastructure
• do it fast
• do it cheap

What's the linkedcare way?

Up to date

1. prolinkedcare connects to simposium ftp and checks if the file was changed
2. if so, prolinkedcare starts an azure instance in microsoft cloud services
3. azure instance connects to simposium ftp and copies the database file
4. azure instance imports the database file
5. azure instance exposes an API and signals prolinkedcare that it's ready
6. prolinkedcare imports relevant data from azure instance
7. prolinkedcare shuts down azure instance
8. prolinkedcare updates the relevant medicines info with the info that came from simposium

What's the linkedcare way?

What's the linkedcare way?

• I need a safe paracetamol for a lactating mother
  1. Just prescribe as usual

What's the linkedcare way?

• Does this simvastatin interacts with this paracetamol
  1. Just prescribe as usual

What's the linkedcare way?

• Context
• No intrusion
• Progressive discovery

What's the linkedcare way?

• Quickly and in practice context see which medicines are suited for each patient, based on visual warnings, being able to compare them in a glance

• While prescribing, be warned of any medicine - medicine interaction
  • prescribed medicine - prescribed medicine
  • prescribed medicine - medication medicine (from himself, other doctor, patient)

• While consulting the patient medication view any interaction present in the medicines he is taking

• When selecting a patient, if he added medicines with dangerous interactions, the doctor is informed

• All warnings have a clear design, progressively disclosing all the information needed by the doctor

Why So Slow?

• Study available information
• Design the architecture needed just to get the data in a timely manner
• Figure out how a new feature will fit into our behemoth (development perspective)
• Design an interaction process that won't get in the way of the doctor work
• Design an interaction process that won't be easily disregarded by the doctor
• Start developing... and the real fun begins​
  • incomplete information from the simposium
  • how to process all the info without affecting the performance for the end user
  • how to transport huge chunk of information between servers without to much delay
  • how to deal with the fact of one medicine having 10's of interactions
  • ...