Nurses in 80+ Facilities Welcomed a Hospital App with Offline Features
About the Client
The Client is an Austrian healthcare group with more than 80 healthcare facilities across the country.
Poor Connectivity Made the Web App Unreliable for Nurses
The Client had trouble with its existing web-based solution for nurses. Because some parts of the Client's hospitals had a poor internet connection, the functionality of the online web app was unstable. A nurse could input data into the fields, click Submit, and then get a disconnection notification — which meant the loss of all the previously entered information. To resolve this, the Client needed a mobile solution that would offer the web app's most essential functionality and be fully available offline.
The web application also had a basic UI that the Client did not want to reuse in a mobile solution. At the same time, the Client did not want the design changed too much, as that would make it difficult for nurses to get used to navigating the mobile app.
An Offline-First iPad App With a Familiar, Refreshed UI
INNERLUXES's designers aimed to create an appealing UI with transparent, self-explanatory navigation so the mobile app would be easy to get the hang of from day one. Once the Client approved the design, the iOS development team created a mobile app for iPad, implementing the part of the web app's functionality the Client identified.
As requested by the Client, the mobile app functions entirely offline. Every change a nurse makes in the app is saved locally on the device. Then, once a minute, all changes are synchronized with the back end and become available to other nurses.
The mobile app currently includes five menus:
- Reminders — a starting point for every nurse; the menu shows a list of appointments with their specific type and the procedures to perform.
- Resident List — displays all vital data in neat graphs and shows each patient's individual care and exercise plans, personal information, and care reports (comments on a patient's condition made by caregivers throughout their hospital stay).
- Medications — the name and intake schedule of the medications prescribed to each patient in the list.
- Care Plans — detailed textual care information for each patient in the list.
- Inbox — text messages from colleagues.
All menus except Inbox have a Filter option that lets a nurse view only certain groups of patients (for example, residents of a specific part of the hospital or those with a certain condition).
An Offline Hospital App Welcomed Across 80+ Facilities
The Client was completely satisfied with how INNERLUXES solved the offline functionality challenge. The new design was also warmly welcomed by the nurses, who found it easy to get used to.
Since the current app version covers nearly 50% of all the features available in the web solution, the Client has already requested development of an update with the rest of the features.
Technologies and Tools
iOS SDK 12, Swift 4, UIKit, SQLite, SQLCipher, Alamofire, REST.