A Mobile Behavioral Health App Improves Clinical Treatment Outcomes

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The Rethink team has decades of experience in the behavioral health industry. Recently, it identified a problem faced by many industry providers – a lack of effective tools to allow it to document and analyze the effectiveness of the treatment programs when working with patients with autism. Measurement of patient progress or success was reliant on behavioral health providers making notes after client therapy session were over – resulting in inaccurate or inconclusive notes; and consequently less effective programming. In response to this need, Rethink developed Rethink Behavioral Health (or Rethink BH) to offer healthcare providers a suite of tools to make designing, implementing, and analyzing behavioral treatment programs simpler and more efficient. By allowing clinicians to track patient data with their software, Rethink made it easier to effectively measure the efficacy of any treatment program – reducing time spent on prep and paperwork, and increasing program effectiveness.

challenge

Because the existing web application had already been deployed and adopted by many Rethink clients, it was vital it find a team who could quickly develop a mobile version of the app that would integrate seamlessly with the existing web app. Located in New York, the company was offered exorbitant prices from local developers and chose to look for a more cost-effective solution that would not result in a compromise in schedule or end product quality.

While Rethink had successfully launched a web version of the Rethink BH application, it recognized that the ability of behavioral health providers to record data was still limited by the need to be in front of a computer to use the app – it was better than scribbled notes, but not as good as real-time data collection. Rethink determined that a mobile version of the application was necessary to allow behavioral health experts and clinicians to record treatment program data while interacting with their patients.

Time was of the essence in developing and deploying the new application, as the ability to enter data in real-time would make a substantial difference to both the clinicians’ ability to administer and analyze effective treatment programs, and to the results experienced by behavioral therapy patients.

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SOLUTION

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Rethink’s Chief Financial Officer had partnered with Venice Consulting Group on a previous project with another company and recommended VCG as the solution to the problem they were currently facing.

Rethink tapped Venice Consulting Group to develop the mobile application of their behavioral health treatment program app. VCG’s Nearshore hybrid development model allowed it to work closely with Rethink to integrate the existing web and developing mobile apps on a truncated timetable, while keeping costs relatively low.

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THE DEVELOPMENT PROCESS

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JOURNEY FROM web APP TO MOBILE APP

Gather requirements to prototype mobile version of the application

VCG developers gathered data from the existing web application to determine the approximate requirements for the mobile app, allowing them to create a framework upon which they would fine tune their version of the app until it met all the needs of Rethink and their clients. As many of Rethink’s clients were already actively using the web version, the prototype for the mobile app was created to closely mimic the user experience of the web application.

Identify app-specific requirements, prioritize them and build a development schedule

Specialized services were required in order to integrate the web and mobile versions of the Rethink BH application. VCG’s goal was to develop a framework that provided the client with all the relevant information, so that ultimately Rethink was able to make the decisions about which items would have priority.

Create iterations of the prototype and obtain feedback from Rethink

While the initial prototype only included 6 screens, the scope of the project increased as Rethink recognized additional needs to serve its users. VCG continued to iterate the mobile prototype while also offering recommendations on how the web application could be improved to optimize performance and ensure seamless integration between the two versions.

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challenges included:

HIPAA Compliance RequirementsThe nature of the application prompted the need for additional security layers to ensure the application was compliant with HIPAA regulations and kept the personal information of each patient secure and private.

VCG implemented authentication and authorization solutions, as well as local and centralized row level locking on the database to protect against access to all sensitive data by anyone other than the authorized clinician. A system that would allow all data to be remotely wiped from a lost or stolen device was also architected and deployed, to ensure the highest standards in data protection and industry compliance were met.

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challenges included:

SHORTENED TIMELINEBecause so many of Rethink’s clients were already regularly using the Rethink BH web application, there was considerable pressure to bring a mobile application to market quickly. Rethink needed to address pains encountered by the limited use of the app at a desktop and to minimize the number of users who would have to switch from the old version of Rethink BH to the new.

VCG used a mobile cross-platform called the Appcelerator Titanium to eliminate the need for multiple code bases. Appcelerator allows developers to write one time in JavaScript when developing apps for both iOS and Android platforms. This resulted in significant time savings, allowing the team to complete development in roughly 6 months, which was followed by QA and Beta testing. The use of the Appcelerator platform also allowed the VCG team to optimize

2.performance to handle the increased power demands prompted by the encryption required to comply with privacy and security regulations.

To keep the project moving rapidly through multiple development phases, Venice Consulting Group used the Redmine scope management tool and had weekly status and demo calls to collect feedback from Rethink, as well as direct calls with their project manager to deal with unexpected issues – this was made possible by the hybrid Nearshore model which eliminated the need to coordinate across multiple time zones.

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challenges included:

BUDGET constraintsVCG’s hybrid Nearshore model cut development costs in half when compared to traditional local mobile development, allowing Rethink to launch their mobile app in less than average time for a significantly lower cost.

This allowed Rethink to provide the tools their end users needed to improve behavioral health treatment program design and implementation, and to provide more effective treatment to its patients, without going over budget.

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about the application:

The completed mobile version of the Rethink BH application offered a wide range of features to help streamline the workflow of clinicians using the app and improve the effectiveness of treatment plans.

Features included:

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Dynamic Data Collection Options - Application users can choose from a variety of types of data to collect during each lesson to customize how the efficacy of treatment plans are measured. Data collection options include duration, frequency, task analysis, intervals and opportunity (whether the subject completed a task with or without prompting).

Lessons - This features allows users to select targets and data collection options with a dynamic “steps” capability.

Lesson Tracking - Clinicians can choose to track lessons and related data for either skills acquisition or behavioral support, making it easier to monitor a patient’s progress over time.

Baseline or Teaching Configuration - Users can employ this feature to choose between monitoring a patient’s baseline data or beginning to track teaching data.

Multi-User Capabilities - In order to maintain patient privacy, the application can be used by multiple users on the same device while storing and managing each user’s data separately and securely.

Web Application Integration - The mobile version of the Rethink BH application is fully integrated with the original web app through a collection of web services linking both to a shared centralized database.

Syncing For Mobile/Offline Sessions - The application can still be utilized without an internet connection, and the sync feature allows users to post data collected during offline mobile sessions and sync the data to the centralized database.

Venice Consulting Group was able to complete the development of the Rethink BH mobile application within a tight timeline, meaning clinicians and patients alike were able to benefit from a mobile, real-time reporting system much sooner than would otherwise have been possible. Venice Consulting Group was able to complete the project at approximately half the cost of the industry average, by using the hybrid Nearshore outsourcing model, while still reaching completion of the project on the truncated timetable. Local developers would have charged Rethink significantly more to architect a mobile version of the Rethink BH application, and outsourcing to offshore teams would have inevitably delayed delivery of the final product.

The partnership between the Rethink team and Venice Consulting Group’s experts means that the mobile application has already been deployed in the field, and clients are benefiting from the new design, mobility and user interface.

Ultimately, the best measure of the success of this project lies with the behavioral health patients who are now benefitting from more effective treatment programs, thanks to the Rethink BH mobile app. The mobile app has made it easier for clinicians to more accurately record data and measure results, and to record more detailed data, even when managing multiple treatment programs simultaneously.

RESULT

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Venice Consulting Group is proud to have supported ReThink BH in helping revolutionize behavioral health treatment programs are designed, implemented and measured.- Jake Ryan, Venice Consulting Group

Venice Consulting Group is an Internet + Mobile application development company specializing in user experience and process optimization. With a valuable combination of regulated industry experience and

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