When your medtech company has decided to move forward with building a custom application, it’s important to select a company that can not only deliver the finished product you will need, but will also work well with your team throughout the development process.
When a medtech company signs an agreement to work with us for custom application development, our goal is to implement processes that allow our team to deliver a great product, while also fostering trust and confidence between our team and the client. We have worked with several medtech companies over the years, and have settled on key components of our workflow that work well for both our team and our clients’ needs.
These are the key tenets of our workflow for medtech application development.
Flexibility
We pride ourselves on being able to work with any technology or tool that our clients need. Some application developers will only work within a certain technology or framework, and that may not be the best solution for what the client ultimately needs. Trying to shoehorn an application into the wrong type of technology rarely leads to a satisfactory outcome. We have a diverse group of developers, and try not to prescribe a particular technology or platform for an application until we fully understand the client’s end goal.
We also understand that sometimes a medtech client may be limited to a particular technology or platform for their application based on standards set by their company. As a client, this can really limit your options on which developers you can work with. By remaining flexible with the way we develop applications, we can better accommodate our clients’ needs.
Solutions Over Tools
Another aspect that plays into the flexibility of our team is that we are very solution-oriented. We are happy to provide recommendations on a tech stack for an application if a client doesn’t have a preference, but we never want to plan out or prescribe a solution until we fully understand the problem the client needs to solve with the application. We believe that our clients get a better result when we listen to their needs and develop solutions based on those needs, rather than trying to tell clients what their needs are and what they should want out of their application.
Communication & Responsiveness
We believe that regular communication is a key aspect of a successful application development project. With some application development workflow models, the developers don’t have much communication with the client outside of the handful of deliverable meetings that are scheduled during the development process. With this lower threshold of communication, it can be more difficult for the developers to course-correct if the work doesn’t match up with client expectations.
Instead, we build more frequent communication into our development process. It’s important that our clients understand the value of what we’re doing for them, so we aim to communicate in ways that resonate with them. We meet with clients more often, typically weekly, to review our progress and what we plan to do next. We also create shared Slack channels with our clients to provide a quicker avenue for communication than email. We even join our client’s project management and ticketing systems to facilitate greater collaboration. All of this helps our clients feel more at ease with what we are doing, because we are communicative and transparent throughout the engagement.
Trustworthiness & Accountability
We have a high standard of communication because we ultimately want our clients to feel that they can trust us with their needs. Along with trustworthiness comes accountability.
While we take steps to reduce the likelihood of mistakes, including code review for every team member, mistakes do happen. We own up to our mistakes and move swiftly on correcting them so that we can move forward. We are also thorough in diagnosing any errors reported by the client. “I can’t reproduce that” isn’t part of our vernacular. We try to ask the right questions of the client to try to see what they are seeing so we can help.
Aesthetics
It’s important to us that our applications not only meet expectations from a functional perspective, but also look great and are pleasing to use. In addition to programming, we also involve designers and front end developers that are both functional and aesthetically pleasing. Beyond the look and feel, designers and front end developers help ensure that the application is user-friendly, compliant with the company’s style guide, and meets regulatory requirements like the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).
Long-Term Support
Application development is rarely a one and done engagement for us. Once the application is complete, we don’t leave our clients to figure out how to maintain it on their own. We offer retainers to provide ongoing support post-launch. In our experience, this tends to work out better for the client in the long run, especially if their internal developers are not as familiar with the tech stack of the application, or if they are simply too busy with other work to provide support. With a support retainer, the client doesn’t have to wait for their developers to be available to get the work they need done in a timely manner.
At the end of the day, every application development company is different in how they approach a project. We are transparent about our workflow and core values because we believe that it is an important factor that every medtech company should consider before hiring a development firm for a project. We won’t be the best fit for every client out there, but we want the clients that do work with us to have a great experience and feel like they received something valuable from the engagement.
Justin Bantuelle balances the responsibilities of both the Chief Operating Officer and the Web Technology Director after having worked with Health Connective for more than a dozen years. Justin regularly leads the cross-disciplinary teams in building out and updating applications for Fortune 500 companies.
Justin keeps his technical abilities sharp by contributing to an eclectic mix of open-source and personal projects on Github.
As the marketing manager, Ashley ensures that our clients’ marketing strategies are put into action. This includes content writing, SEO, online advertising, analytics, and interfacing with the tools, systems, and team members needed to help our clients accomplish their marketing goals.
