Modea

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the executive IT director of a university hospital.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Modea?

We worked with them on our patient portal. Epic is our enterprise medical records system, and it provides a patient portal called MyChart. That’s specifically related to clinical data, but not to peripherals like markings, provider searches, appointments, and so on. We wanted to have one unified patient portal in order to not direct patients to multiple places. 

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We provided full documentation on Epic and the other tools we’re using, along with our server infrastructure.

The app Modea developed integrates with Epic as well as with other systems for valet parking, provider searches, and so on.

How did you come to work with Modea?

We sent out an RFP to 7–8 organizations and narrowed it down to two. Aside from the architectural part, we also included marketing in the decision. We wanted the vendor to have a good understanding of how to make the app more patient-friendly.

How much have you invested with them?

The project cost was $750,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Modea in July 2019, and it’s ongoing. The project got sidetracked because of the COVID situation, but we’re expecting to finish everything by the end of August 2020.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

We’re really happy from a marketing standpoint. They understood the marketing language around what we needed, and they delivered all the functionalities we needed. They were able to speak to both our technical and marketing people in order to get things done.

How did Modea perform from a project management standpoint?

They used Confluence, Jira, and a few other project management tools to keep track of things. We had one main point of contact for any issues, and she was the one coordinating the project and our meetings. 

We had a very aggressive deadline, looking to go live on March 31st, and they were able to achieve it and give us a demo by that date. Unfortunately, the COVID situation complicated the launch.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Modea was willing to adapt to our needs. Also, they keep up with the latest technologies in the mobile front. The app they made certainly looks modern.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They didn’t have a lot of knowledge around making independent apps that integrate with Epic, but they’ve learned a lot since the start.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

We hired an internal team in parallel with the Modea collaboration, in order to reduce cost in the long term. We’re following through with what they’re doing rather than being hands on. We’ve picked up all the code and we’re maintaining it, but it would’ve been better if we got involved with this right from the start.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the director of digital program at a freestanding, independent, nonprofit children’s hospital. I’m responsible for a few different areas within the marketing department as well as a fundraising program.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Modea?

We needed consultation and design resources for our website UX. We have a couple of different projects going on with them, but for this is UX. We wanted to look at all of the search experiences on our website, so our global site search, find a doctor search, and locations search experience. Ultimately, we hired Modea to do some discovery and design of a new experience.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

The first part of the work is discovery. They conduct industry research for the work in organizations that look like ours. They also do some out of industry research to look at search experiences in other industries so we can experience industries outside of pediatric medicine and not have tunnel vision. Then they conducted an audit of our current system and coordinated some stakeholder interviews for us. Putting all of that information together, they gave us a recommendation. 

We worked with them on giving some direction on a new design and functionality that was all centered around the website user. We currently work with an outsourced development team, so Modea delivered us design comps to hand over to the development team. Currently, they provide ad hoc maintenance for us.

What is the team composition?

We worked with Chris (COO), a project manager, an analytics expert, and a designer.

How did you come to work with Modea?

I met with Chris at a conference a few years ago. He had asked for a few minutes of my time so we grabbed a coffee and he told me what they were about. Immediately I knew there was going to be potential there just based on the way Chris presented.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked on the project from July–Oct. 2018. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement? 

My whole team has loved working with them on analytics. The dashboards that they set up work really well for us. All of the designs that they’ve provided have gotten really good feedback from not just our team, but other folks outside of our team as well. Our search experience on the site is going to be launching in the next month or so.

How did Modea perform from a project management standpoint?

They were excellent. We worked with two project managers throughout the collaboration. The first one was fantastic and then when she went on maternity leave we got another one who was the best project manager I’ve ever worked with. We used two project management tools, Atlassian and Jira. During the beginning of the project, they came into town every few months. We had regular calls with them about once a week.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’re extremely smart and thoughtful. They aren’t approaching the project from a know-it-all standpoint. Modea works with us and they’re thoughtful about what they put together. Discovery is very important to them and there’s a sense of humility there, which I really appreciated because there is always something to learn. I get the sense that Chris and his team actually care about their work and their clients and it’s actually genuine. They aren’t like other agencies I’ve worked with where they just use a lot of big words and try to get a signature.

Are there any areas they could improve?

We could use more than one project manager among our different projects, but other than that they’re perfect.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be prepared to be fully engaged in your project. They work with the client, so they rely on the client’s input. 

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the digital media specialist at Chesapeake Regional Healthcare, which is an independent health system based in Southeastern Virginia with reach in Northeastern North Carolina. We have a regional medical center and a medical group with over 25 physicians and providers. I manage all of our web projects, which includes working with SEO, development, social media, video production, and web security.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Modea?

Our old Drupal 7 website wasn’t implemented well. I identified the issue and then contacted Modea to build a new site.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Modea built our site using Drupal 8. In addition to that, their team created a custom “find a doctor” tool with AngularJS that fully integrates with the Drupal platform. We handled all the content, and their team made it easy for me to build specific pages. They also used Solr on the site to help with the search and also integrated HubSpot, which we already used internally. Modea used Pantheon as our hosting provider that includes a CDN and caching tool. Finally, their team made the website mobile-friendly and brought it up to WCAG AA compliance.

What is the team composition?

Our main point of contact for the website was Ashley (Project Manager, Modea). Chris (COO, Modea) worked with us a little, and we had two developers and graphic designers that operated concurrently on different aspects of the platform. They also brought in part-time developers for a short time during the engagement.

How did you come to work with Modea?

I met Chris and Bryce (COO & CEO, Modea) at a healthcare marketing strategy conference. I met them in 2016, and it took over a year and a half to start engaging on the project.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent around $173,200.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working with Modea in April 2018. The site went live at the beginning of January 2019.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

Our new website is fantastic. It is faster and more interactive than our previous platform. We’ve heard positive things across the board. Modea does an excellent job with the information architecture and UI, which benefited our content development. Additionally, there hasn’t been a dip in organic search. It’s had a surprising bump. The “find a doctor” tool is performing better, generating traffic through Google and Bing. We’re considering working on our internet with them.

How did Modea perform from a project management standpoint?

It was awesome working with Ashley directly. There were daily stand up calls and while I missed a few, they met every day for a quick call at the same time. Modea’s internal methods helped decisions get made quicker. They managed the project through documentation, which made the process transparent.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I appreciated Modea’s overall approach to digital experiences. They purposefully limit themselves to focus on excelling in a specific element of projects. This greatly benefited our organization. Modea felt like an extension of our team because of our efficient communication back-and-forth.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Drupal 8 is a newer platform. A few ideas ended up not coming to fruition. Modea could’ve researched more to discover what potential limitations could occur. Despite this, Modea did an exceptional job presenting options when issues arose.  

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I would advise being involved in the process. I made the project my priority, and that made it easier for them. Having a project manager internally whose dedicated and gets decisions made can only benefit the project.