Processus de développement d'une solution de suivi de l'observance médicamenteuse des patients et de gestion thérapeutique médicamenteuse 

When introducing a new medicine to the market, ensuring the drug is bringing the expected results without any significant side effects is critical. To do that, medicine producers must conduct a study on patients to collect the data necessary to determine the medicine’s effectiveness and compare the results with medicine that already exists on the market.  

For the study results to prove reliable, the researchers must be sure that patients take medication as prescribed. If patients don’t adhere to the medication regimen, their condition might worsen, or they may experience side effects that wouldn’t usually occur.  

Les données collectées pendant la thérapie médicamenteuse peuvent aider les fabricants de médicaments à mieux comprendre la réponse du patient au traitement et à l'ajuster en fonction des résultats.

Dans cet article, nous souhaitons présenter une solution de suivi de l'observance médicamenteuse des patients et de gestion de la pharmacothérapie sur laquelle notre équipe a récemment travaillé.

Solution de gestion du traitement de l'hémophilie

Our client’s goal was to build a haemophilia treatment management solution. Haemophilia is a rare genetic disorder that affects the blood’s ability to clot properly, resulting in prolonged bleeding or spontaneous bleeding into joints and muscles. Regular monitoring of clotting factor levels, bleeding frequency, and joint health are essential for assessing treatment effectiveness and adjusting the treatment plan. 

Our client asked a group of patients suffering from haemophilia to participate in the study on the effectiveness of a new medicine. They would use an activity-tracking wearable device (smartwatch), which would collect the necessary data and monitor patients’ response to the treatment. 

Our team implemented a complex end-to-end solution, enabling monitoring of the patient’s health by transferring data collected by the smartwatch to a database for further analysis.  The patients are also able to manually report certain parameters through a mobile app and register what medicine they take daily by scanning special barcodes on the packaging, which are compliant with a GS1 standard.

Quelle solution technique avons-nous proposée et quel était le périmètre de notre travail ?

We established two teams – one for the mobile app part and the other one for the backend – which worked in close cooperation. At the initial stage, we defined communication interfaces between the systems. Based on these interfaces, developers coded the functionalities that were simultaneously tested on both sides – mobile and backend – to ensure the communication is seamless and works correctly.  

Since the integration involves different systems and the data must be transferred in a reliable way to maintain consistency, the management and testing in the development, test and production environment, each having a different configuration, is a big challenge. There may be issues with distance and pulse calculators or correctly defining time intervals between the systems. This is something that, in the case of clinical trials, may cause serious problems. We managed to find a solution to overcome this challenge.  

We developed a mobile application (for iOS and Android) integrated with a smartwatch. The solution was integrated with a backend solution on the customer’s side to manage data in one place. In addition, we developed a web application to enable automated reporting on the treatment to the research team on a daily basis. The patients were provided with standardised surveys and recorded the symptoms of disease occurrence and their reaction to the treatment. It helped the research team to check patients’ health outcomes according to the study schedule.  

Gestion de la configuration des environnements

Comme mentionné précédemment, le périmètre du projet incluait la construction d'une intégration bidirectionnelle entre l'application et la montre connectée, ainsi que le backend de la solution. L'intégration comprenait trois systèmes :

• mobile : iOS et Android,
• web (accessible en ligne),
• un système qui transfère les données de la montre connectée via le web.

Next, synchronisation with a wearable device was also tested.  We observed whether the data is consistent between all three systems. With synchronisation periods that occur every 15 minutes, there may be certain discrepancies, especially since data can be edited or changed in multiple systems. For example, a user can input data on their phone, and at the same time, the information from the wearable device may be synched – at this point, it must be decided which data is more up-to-date. 

Technologies utilisées dans le projet

Quant au mobile – le code a été écrit en React Native, ce qui permet de créer une solution simultanément pour deux plateformes – Android et iOS. Cela minimise le temps de développement et simplifie la maintenance.

The first phase of the test environment was performed on simulators, and the simulated application was connected to the backend API. The second stage was the real integration of the app on Android and iOS devices, plus the connection to a smartwatch. We monitored whether the data was collected and transferred accurately. 

The backend was written in Ruby on Rails. All end-points were exposed and tested using Swagger – a tool that allows for documenting and testing the API and reproducing any problems. It allowed us to clearly define a border between applications and focus on bugs investigation on the correct system. 

La communication dans cette solution est conforme à la standard FHIR. 

Nous pouvons vous aider à créer une solution de suivi de l'observance médicamenteuse des patients et de gestion de la pharmacothérapie

Notre équipe vous accompagnera dans la construction d'une solution adaptée à vos besoins. Consultez notre page dédiée au développement de logiciels pour le secteur de la santé pour plus d'informations, ou contactez-nous via le formulaire ci-dessous.