Vermonster

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m on the faculty at Boston University’s School of Medicine.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Vermonster?

We wanted to build a website to provide our learners a note-taking tool to log their learning experiences while they're at work.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They were involved from the initial design process and they did all of the backend development. In addition to the note-taking tool, there's a learning portfolio and a community feed where people can see what their peers are learning. We also wanted a heat map so we could see where learning is happening in our environment, and they were able to provide that as well.

What is the team composition?

We worked with about five of their developers, designers, and project managers.

How did you come to work with Vermonster?

They were referred to us from Boston University.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent about $60,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in May 2016 and the web platform launched in August 2016.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The site is very sustainable and doing well. We did qualitative interviews with our learners and found that they really enjoy it and think it's very helpful for their learning. Right now it's just used by our department but we hope to expand it very soon.

How did Vermonster perform from a project management standpoint?

I thought they were fantastic. We met at their office multiple times and they came to our department to see how learning takes place. That really helped them to visualize how the project would work. They went above and beyond in terms of bringing us more features than we had initially thought possible due to our limited funding.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their people are really down to earth. They communicate well and are very open about their entire process. They did a good job of really getting us involved.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, I don’t think so.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I can't think of anything.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

We create point-of-care clinical decision support tools for treatment selection in complex disease areas.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Vermonster?

We brought them on for architecture and development of guidelines for an authoring platform, a point-of-care web service, and an application that can be launched from the doctor's medical record.

What were your goals for this project?

Ultimately, we want 20% of cancer treatment decisions to be evidence-based and 10% to be value-based.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

I met them at a Ruby Meetup in Boston. After that, we gave them a small test project to ascertain their fitness for future projects.

Describe the project in detail.

The platform uses CDS Hooks to launch an app from the physician medication order screen. The app looks up patient data from the electronic health record, then passes it to the AI engine. The engine analyzes the patient data against guidelines and other sources, then suggests evidence-based therapy options.

Later, we measure and report on compliance with the evidence for payers and providers who share the risk in value-based care agreements.

What was the team composition?

It varied from 4–8 developers, designers, and key health informatics architects. All team members had or now have significant experience in the latest health IT standards (e.g., Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources [FHIR]).

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What outcomes or results can you share that demonstrate progress and/or success?

We met the business and clinical objectives for the product and have published the results. The tools now enable us to measure over 85% of concordance with the evidence base for the most critical and expensive treatment selections in all of healthcare.

How effective was the project management?

Their use of the latest agile and user-centered design approaches were highly effective and collaborative.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

They were able to produce high-value, high-quality apps for large-scale commercial deployment without a hiccup. This is a very advanced development shop that delivers.

What tips or recommendations do you have?

Keep lean at the Epic planning level (not just feature and story) to avoid what the Japanese might call mura, the type of waste that comes from getting too far ahead of what other teams can integrate with.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a Senior Editor with a publishing firm. I write and edit, but also work on our innovation projects.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Vermonster?

We publish content on a variety of platforms and we’re always on the lookout for the next opportunity. We decided to experiment with chatbots and needed a firm to help outline and develop the project.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We zeroed in on Slack since this was an environment we were already familiar with. Vermonster helped us conduct research to determine how users would interact with our bot. We wrote a few basic scripts based on the results and then conducted user tests, with a human mimicking the bot’s role.

They worked alongside our in-house UX designers and developers to build the bot, which our users can now install to receive content through Slack.

Following the success of this initial project, we hired Vermonster to build a similar chatbot for Facebook Messenger.

They continue to add improvements to both bots and provide ongoing maintenance.

What is the team composition?

We worked directly with two or three developers and a UX researcher. One person also managed our contract.

How did you come to work with Vermonster?

Someone on our tech team recommended two firms once we realized the project was beyond our internal capabilities. We conducted interviews and decided to go with Vermonster because they were competitively priced and seemed to share our vision.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in April 2016 and our relationship is ongoing. We launched the Slack bot in September 2016 and re-engaged them in the spring of 2017.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

While both bots are still in the prototype phase, with plenty of room for growth, we’ve gotten good feedback from users. People interact with the chatbots on a daily basis, and while we have a small user base at this time, our metrics show that our audience is highly engaged and happy with the product.

The bots also received positive mentions in a number of news outlets.

How did Vermonster perform from a project management standpoint?

As an editor, I don’t have a lot of experience in managing technology projects. Vermonster recognized that they would have to take lead and played a very proactive role to keep the project on track. They outlined a detailed schedule and arranged daily standups to share their progress. We also spoke on a weekly basis to discuss long-term priorities. They did an excellent job and made my life easier.

We met in person a couple of times during the engagement, but we mostly interacted over video calls.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Not only were they pleasant to work with, but they also went above and beyond to meet our hectic schedule. We had to pause the project a couple of times as we waited for investment approval, and the delays created a sense of urgency once we started up again. This kind of schedule isn’t ideal, but Vermonster really accommodated us.

More recently, our internal developer moved on to another job. We contacted Vermonster and they were willing to step in with no forewarning to take over maintenance. Their flexibility has been a huge advantage for us.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I can’t think of anything. We're very pleased and continue to work with them based on their results.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Our first engagement could have gone smoother if we’d been more prepared on our end. Having a clear schedule and a better idea about the UX resources needed relative to development would have improved productivity. Vermonster got us on track, but it helps to already have an outline.