Sogijo

LineOR is a mobile app that will allow doctors to reserve hospital operating rooms, schedule a surgery and notify everyone involved directly to their phones. Our client requested our help to work on a list of tasks to complete and launch a new application for Android and iOS. 

In order to coordinate all necessary steps before and during a surgery, this system provides a really simple solution to handle the complexity of the room availability. Therefore one of the stakeholders is necessary a doctor, involved on the requirement phase to define with great accuracy all the process. The system combines an administrator panel and 2 mobile applications, all connected to same server.

The administrative site is a web application that combines a backend API server implemented with Ruby on Rails and the frontend UI using react web and bootstrap. From this panel, an admin is able to manage all registered users, assigned a role and a unique security token (key) that will allow them to connect from their mobile phones. The administrator user will also be able to manage the registration and cancellation of hospitals, reservations and everything that is needed to keep the system operational. Additionally, the backend API will provide the entire logic and control for connecting every mobile app. When starting this project, this panel was slow and unsecure. We've worked to include minimum and basic security according to the standards and optimized the database, server settings and ruby on rails components to keep an optimal speed. 

The mobile app was defined for the hospital staff, every person involved during the surgery and the iPad application was defined to stay inside the operating room before and during the surgery.

The workflow was simple:

• someone book the room, schedule date and time
• every doctor, anesthetist etc, will need to confirm using their phone
• all the staff will receive a push notification before a surgery, they again needs to confirm
• the iPad application will be used to track the surgery in the operating room.
• both application includes an in-app chat section, where anyone can contact the rest of the users.

Mobile app

The client has started the development with a previous provider, who couldn't finish expected features. With almost none documentation, we have took the apps for both platform Android and iOS and started working on a list of existing bugs. Once everything was fixed, we started checking for improvements. 

The app was implemented originally with React Native, which was a really good approach and we decided to proceed and upgrade all components to the latest version available. The advantage of using React Native is that we can use Javascript, which is a technology we are plenty familiar with, but in the end of the build process we compile the code and publish a real native app for every platform. This is faster to code and time saver. It includes better native effects and far more reliability in terms of the user experience. Additionally to existing basic features, we've also implemented the logic to detect Internet connection (mobile data or wifi) so we can detect offline mode, especially for a better user experience when using features, the chat for instance. 

We have modified all user interfaces improving UX and adjusting to desired design. The chat feature was implemented from scratch for our developers and integrated to the existing app. We have also integrated OneSingal to keep a real-time and redundant notification service. It ensure that every user receive a push notification on their phone for every chat message according to activities they need to monitor. 

From the beginning of the project, we could see that all features required for the app were not so complex, but everything should be perfectly synced for every device, you can imagine that at the operating room the margin of fails is zero and all the team committed to this. 

Technologies

• React is an open source framework for web apps. It is sponsored by Facebook.
• React Native is an open source framework for mobile apps. It is sponsored by Facebook.
• Redux is an open-source JavaScript library for managing application state.
• Ruby on Rails is a web-application framework that includes everything needed to create database-backed web applications according to the Model-View-Controller (MVC) pattern.
• Bootstrap is a responsive frontend framework for implementing cross-browser and cross-devices web designs.
• Heroku is a platform as a service (PaaS) that enables developers to build, run, and operate applications entirely in the cloud.
• OneSignal is a powerful SDK, API, and platform for sending mobile & web push notifications.