PRODUCT MANAGEMENT

5 product management hacks to build great products by Subhadeep Mondal, @smondal1008

/ PRODUCT MANAGEMENT / 5 minutes of reading

In the past 5 years, I had the opportunity to build and ship great consumer products which touches the lives of millions of people around the world. Recently, Branchmetrics invited me to share some of my learnings at Innov8 CoWorking Space along with speakers from UrbanLadder, HeadSpin, Branch.io and Glispa Global.

Here are some tips to keep in mind while building products.

1. Think Big, Start Small

A complex product that works is always an evolution of a simple product that worked.

If you have built a complex product from the scratch, it’s not gonna work. You have to start and figure out that simple product which works. This is relevant for any startup which is about to launch its product or an existing company who is about to launch a new product feature. You may have big ideas, but going to market as soon as possible should be your priority. So find out that simple, small functional part of your overall product that you potential users need the most and launch it. As Reid Hoffman says:

If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late.

2. Be obsessed about product definition

Over the last 5 years, I’ve realized startups often spend most of their efforts at the wrong steps of the product development process.
Suppose if you had 100 minutes to finish the end-to-end of a product. Most of the time I’ve seen startups spending time like the following.
85/100 minutes are spent on designing, building and beta testing, so what’s wrong with this process? Well, building a product is a combined effort of various cross-functional inter-dependent teams. To make sure, all the teams work in sync product definition is the most important step. The role of a product manager or a founder is to freeze on his thoughts and communicate the same very clearly across all the cross-functional teams. Why is it so important? It’s simple, it takes time and money to build a product. Each change you make, after the product definition step, will exponentially increase the go-to-market time which in turn increases the total cost of building the product.
So, spend as much time as you can prioritising and defining a product rather than getting lost in the vicious cycle of agile development between designers and developers. It will save lot of product development time and money for your startup.

3. Look at AARRR metrics daily

Make sure you track everything, observe and analyze the pirate metrics on a regular basis. This is very important because the first step of “product prioritization” is dependent on your pirate metrics. Make a habit of looking at data everyday morning while going to the office or starting your day at the office. You may or may not have to take immediate actions but the habit helps you keep numbers at your fingertips whenever you need to make instant decisions about the product. There are several tools to help you track AARRR metrics, here are few of them.

4. One new feature isn’t a solution

Most of the time you’ll think adding a new feature will improve one of my pirate metrics, but in reality, it’s the opposite. Often good products which have a really good core feature has seen a decrease in the engagement of the core features after 2 new features were introduced. So, give a lot of thought on “why” do your users need what you think they need and validate that hypothesis without even writing a single line of code. A new feature is not always the solution for your current problems.
How can you solve your metrics problems then? Well, small incremental efforts towards optimising your AARRR funnels will help you improve your pirate metrics not always a new feature.

4. Celebrate Usage and Not Shipping

This is very common among various product companies — they celebrate shipping of new products/features rather than celebrating usage numbers. Shipping actually means nothing! You have just shipped your products to your users and you have no idea how its adoption is going to be or how it is going to impact your overall AARRR metrics in days to come. Don’t waste your beer and money celebrating shipping of products, instead, keep usage numbers as the targets for your teams and celebrate those moments with your team.

5. Spent 30 mins with your users every day

All of us work from the comfort of our home or office analyzing and taking all sort of hypothesis on what a user wants. After making mistakes repeatedly, I’ve learned that speaking with 2–3 users every day gives you the knowledge and insights about your products which you have never thought about. It helps you know the stories of your users and how your product has been helpful to them in their day to day lives and also gives you relevant ideas on how you can make your product better. Don’t be shy, ask your users for 10 mins and they will be happy to give it you — but the first step is you asking them.
That’s it, I hope these insights will help you build your own startup, improve your current product development process, understand your customers better and improve your startup metrics. Happy to hear your current product development process and would be glad to share my thoughts.

Subhadeep Mondal

CoFounder of PregBuddy — a women healthcare platform, currently focused on expecting mothers. Prior to PregBuddy, I’ve led Product & Growth at SignEasy, Stayzilla, Gaana.com and cofounded Flixstreet.in back at my IIT days. Feel free to reach to me on Twitter @smondal1008 or at subhadeep@pregbuddy.com.

The article has been republished here with the Authors’ permission. The article first appeared in the author’s LinkedIn pulse page.

Author
Subhadeep Mondal

Co-founder & CEO of PregBuddy | Looking for Android FullStack Engineer | Speaker | Ex-Product at SignEasy, Gaana.com

Build #MVP to gather customer intelligence!! by @tejasvdeshmukh #health2con

/ PRODUCT MANAGEMENT / 3 minutes of reading

Over the years working in Healthcare, witnessed endless innovation across the technology landscape over last few years. This is only due to the aspiring moguls who understand the crux of business and would like to capitalize on specific problems using new approaches.
Innovation is everywhere, be it harnessing the data power for population health or using advanced technology to enhance digital health. From Outcome Health, Livongo… toPriorAuthNow, each one of them have addressed a specific healthcare challenge in a unique way. Enhancing clinical outcomes, access to care, and improved operational efficiencies.
We are now living in the era of innovation!!

Startups are exploding in numbers; it’s very common to see a bunch of college drop-outs or professionals working extra hours to build their dream product. They strongly believe in their solution disrupt the way healthcare is delivered today.
All innovations begin with an idea, a futuristic thought, to solve current challenges. As an innovator, one needs to have strong business understanding and analytical skills to identify solutions addressing day-to-day challenges. Before building any product, one should figure out what problem is being solved and for whom. This perhaps is the first step to gauge success of a product.
Validate your idea by doing a competitor analysis and identify product uniqueness. Always be open to good ideas and also learn from competitor’s mistakes.
Once you put together all these pieces you begin your transition from ideation towards building minimal viable product.
Fig 1: MVP Process- Building Minimum Desirable Product
First step of building MVP is to define the user workflows (needless to say you understand the needs of different users). List all features that will be part of the entire product, as much as possible (it’s an evolving process). Prioritize features and group them into high value must-to-have vs potentially good-to-have. Once this exercise is complete, you may begin the development phase (Build-Test-Learn).
Most innovators fail to understand the real objective of MVP. It is to build product with minimum feature for visionaries and few initial customers, in other words we are selling a vision and not a product. Minimal viable product is all about translating end-user expectations.
Fig 2: Success formula for building MVP
Another key factor to ensure successful MVP is to leverage existing solutions that satisfy part of your  business workflows. For example: solutions like Pokitdok for Insurance verification, Validic for device integration, Vidyo for video collaboration, Twilio for secure messaging, MirthConnect as interface engine and many more. This is a much smarter approach than building all features from scratch. Why re-invent the wheel if someone has already solved that piece of puzzle. Our aim should be to design the core, the absolute essential features, with a unique proposition supporting seamless integration into existing workflows.
Early adopters should be convinced with the ease, usability, and value that the solution will add. MVP will help you to gather sufficient customer intelligence that will define the future development needs. Thus building a MVP will be your most valuable asset that will determine your success, and you will need a dynamic technology team to help you take off the idea.
We, at Faichi Solutions, are assisting innovative ideas to  quickly convert into MVP. We convert idea/ design into mature, scalable product, thus improving your chances to get next round of funding. We bring expertise like Population Health Management, Digital Health and Telemedicine, Remote Health Monitoring, mHealth, Enterprise system development, and Integrated Care Management. This helps startups to reduce overall development time to merely 12 to 16 weeks (within a budget of USD 60k to 85k, depending on the complexity of the product design). With experienced resources in healthcare, inherent Silicon Valley culture, we bring in two most valuable attribute Technology and Team, to your success.
Happy to connect with people with innovative ideas who are sitting on the fence (or otherwise) and itching to build a MVP.
Author
Tejas Deshmukh

Highly skilled and motivated professional with rich experience of 13+ years in software product development for Healthcare and Life Sciences vertical, proven track record of building innovative solutions, providing strategic consulting, pre-sales and operational management.

3 P’s framework – 7D’s Process Foundation by Prashantha Sawhney

/ PRODUCT MANAGEMENT / 3 minutes of reading

focus on Process as it relates to the “how” the work is to be done

This article is a continuation of my previous post – 3 P’s framework – People are the key. We now focus on Process as it relates to the “how” the work is to be done.

 There is a plethora of options in terms of processes one can follow to be successful. Across software literature one come across many variations and combinations of the “D..” verbs typically used in software development. One that is simple to use and remember is called 7D’s.

These can be easily understood by asking the quintessential questions of Why, Who (whom/ whose), What, When, Where and How.

Discover

Why are we doing this feature/ product? The other question to answer is for Who(m) is this required? These are the hard questions that need to be clearly answered on what the problem/ solution space is and the potential customer base being looked at. This is generally addressed by Product Managers or Portfolio Managers.

Define

What is the expected functionality? This corresponds to the requirement analysis phase and there are different methodologies that can be used for capturing and validating the requirements or use cases. This is generally addressed by Business Analysts, Product Managers or Product Owners.

Design

How are we going to achieve the requirements? This corresponds to the design phase and based on the organization approach, the level of documentation required can vary. Some level of prototyping is also done in this phase to help validate the designs. This is generally the forte of Technical Architects, Development Leads.

Develop

How is this to be developed given the requirements and design? Focus is on coding/ development, additional steps involved include testing, debugging, documentation and demos before this is considered complete. The development and Quality Assurance teams handle this important phase with help from Project Managers and Scrum Masters.

Deliver

When and how is this expected by the customer? Additional questions that need to be clear are the mode of delivery (packaged build on a disc or digital delivery), any requirements specific to on premise/ Cloud/ SaaS deployments, any specific requirements from a platform perspective (Windows/ Linux/ Apple/ Android/ Xbox/ PlayStation etc.) that need to be addressed? The Configuration Management Team manages this with help from the development team.

Deploy

Where is this tool/ product to be deployed? After the delivery has been made, the actual deployment is done and it is the critical step to get the tool finally in the hands of the customers. There are quite a few projects that do not get past this stage though due to different reasons and sort of lie on the shelf. In case of SaaS/ Cloud offerings, internal DevOps teams manage this phase. In case of on premise installations, this is handled by the customer IT teams along with specialist Implementation Consultants who understand both the product and the customer environments.

Delight

Whose Success is it that we aim for? It is obviously for both the end customer as well as the product teams who have toiled to give a final shape to an idea/requirement. There are sometimes roll-out related challenges, performance and stability issues, hard to reproduce issues and sometimes silly defects, but if we keep the Delight of our customers in mind, we work hard towards debugging and resolve the issues. This is best achieved by having a good communication channel between customer and product teams and is built on a strong foundation of trust.

 Remember a delighted customer will come back to you and you will have many more cycles starting again from the Define phase.

 The article was first published in Mr. Prashantha Sawhney’s LinkedIn Pulse post. The article is reproduced here with the authors permission. The views shared by the author are shared in his personal capacity.

Author
Prashantha Sawhney

Results-driven engineering professional with ~17 years of experience in leading high performance product teams

3 P’s framework – People are the key – Prashantha Sawhney

/ PRODUCT MANAGEMENT / 3 minutes of reading

We focus on People – “who” do the work. While it is important to have a good efficient team, it is equally important to have some norms for them to be successful

This article is a continuation of my previous post – 3 P’s framework to be successful. We focus on People – “who” do the work. While it is important to have a good efficient team, it is equally important to have some norms for them to be successful.


One question that comes up as we look at staffing up or after we have staffed a team is  – will just getting a group of people make them successful in solving problems and making good progress? 

There are many books/ papers suggesting different ways of solving this. The approach that has worked well for me is CHASM. Well, as per the Cambridge dictionary, Chasm means “a profound difference between people, viewpoints, feelings, etc.” Interestingly, in a different perspective and useful way CHASM is an acronym, that I have used for approaching the people aspect:

Collaboration

In small as well as large organizations, we see how working in silos (teams/ departments) causes issues in quality and delivery. This also impacts customer experience, where he/she feels that nobody is really understanding them/ their issue or trying to solve their problem, but tossing the ball across to the next person or department. Collaboration is the key and is an action that the leaders need to demonstrate in their daily work and help inculcate in their teams. This aspect is more of an organizational behavior that individuals need to model.

Humility

In today’s world, everyone is trying to prove themselves every minute/second. In the process, we tend to focus a lot on ourselves, our team and trumpet our success. This may at times lead to having a superiority complex. While this is important, it is even more important to stay humble – so we can learn when we make a mistake or to seek help when we are stuck. It also enables team members to be approachable. This aspect is an individual trait and need to be practiced.

Alignment

Having clear priorities and goals for different team members/ departments that align with the overall company goals is critical. When team members/ departments are not aligned, they can pull in different directions which can cause confusion to the rest of the team/ department. This is an area that the leaders need to work among themselves to get clarity first and then percolate it down the organization. This aspect is more of an organizational behavior.

Skills

When people have the right skills and are equipped with the right knowledge/ tools, they can be very effective. However in today’s world with plethora of knowledge sources and learning avenues, this is something that can be easily picked up/taught even after a team is formed based on the time available and nature of work. This aspect focuses on individual growth and can be substantially aided, with the right organizational support/ policies.

Motivation

With all the other pieces in place, this is the last critical area. When people are aligned with the goals, are challenged at work and believe in the work they do, their motivation levels are the best, There are somethings an organization can do – to provide a good work environment, good recognition and rewards programs, competitive compensation and benefits. However in this aspect, a lot is also the responsibility of the individuals and how they deal with their own internal upkeep and self motivation.

Here’s wishing you have a team that is successful and is able to cross the chasm, from ordinary to very successful teams using CHASM approach.

The article was first published in Mr. Prashantha Sawhney’s LinkedIn Pulse post. The article is reproduced here with the authors permission. The views shared by the author are shared in his personal capacity.

Author
Prashantha Sawhney

Results-driven engineering professional with ~17 years of experience in leading high performance product teams

Social Media Technographics – A way to engage your audience by @msharmas

/ PRODUCT MANAGEMENT / 2 minutes of reading

“Taken together, the Social Technographic groups make up the ecosystem that forms the groundswell. By examing how they are represented in any subgroup, strategists can determine which sorts of strategies make sense to reach their customers.” – Forrester

As part of a successful social media campaign, its important to know the audience with whom we are sharing the content and creating the content for. 

I came across this insightful categorization from Forrester, that provides a categorisation of your Social Media users, using the Social Technographics ladder on the basis of their level of activity on your Social Media Channels


 To enable an engaging social media strategy, it will be important to guide your followers across the various steps in the ladders, leading them from being Inactives to being Creators of thought leadership content.
 
By examining each sub-group, social media strategists can determine which sorts of strategies make sense to reach their target customers. Companies that can understand the typography of their end customers can therefore better target their audience with topics and articles of relevance.

Based on the Forrester Social Technographic ladder of engagement, the people participating and engaging with your content has been categorized by Forrester with the percentage for each type of person.


Suggested Reading

  1. Forrester: Consumer Technographics https://www.forrester.com/data/consumer/dashboards
  2. Forrester: Consumer Technographics https://www.forrester.com/data/consumer/reports 
  3. How To Create A Social Media Marketing Plan In 6 Steps http://ow.ly/USsyb 
  4. The Data Digest: Twitter And Social Technographics by Reineke Reitsma | Forrester Blogs http://blogs.forrester.com/market_research/2010/01/the-data-digest-twitter-and-social-technographics.html
  5. The Data Digest: Introducing Forrester’s Empowered Customer Segmentation http://blogs.forrester.com/anjali_lai/16-07-12-the_data_digest_introducing_forresters_empowered_customer_segmentation 
  6. The Social Marketing Playbook For 2016 https://www.forrester.com/The+Social+Marketing+Playbook+For+2016/-/E-PLA124 

How do you plan on using this categorization for your Social Media Strategy for your own brand? I look forward to hearing back from you with your thoughts and insights.

We are using the following interactive Word Cloud to understand the conversations our readers are having around Digital Health topics

Author

[tab]
[content title=”About Manish Sharma” icon=”fa-heart”]

Manish Sharma

Founder HCITExpert.com, Digital Health Entrepreneur

Connect with me via any of my Social Media Channels

[/content]
[content title=”Latest Articles”]

[/content] [/tab]

3P’s framework to be Successful by Prashantha Sawhney

/ PRODUCT MANAGEMENT / 3 minutes of reading
All of us look for formulas to climb the ladder of success, we can either invent our own or leverage what others before us have tried. Every industry has well documented practices, frameworks and standards that provide guidance on how to be plan, execute and be successful.



 The one framework that has appealed to me and been found useful is called 3 P’s. These are 3 equal pies that help make the circle of what is required to be successful. 

  1. People – relates to “who” does the work
  2. Process – relates to the “how” the work is to be done
  3. Product – relates to the “why” and “what” work needs to be done

People

Many engineers/ technical/ functional experts sometimes tend to think of this aspect as being HR/managerial related. However this is a really critical part as this is the group with whom we spend most of our waking hours. Without people (whether it is 1 or 100 or 1,000), the wheel cannot exist. It is not just about having people occupying seats, but about having the right people. Having people collaborate with each other helps move in the right direction else there is no tangible progress.

Process

Having appropriate processes in place helps us be predictable in what we do as well as enabling quality aspects to be met in a timely manner. We do not have infinite time, resources or money to try to do things the right way and need to deliver or execute in more defined ways with proper definitions of expectations at each stage of the process. These can evolve or time and get overly complicated but with right attention they can also be simplified Execution cannot be as stated below:

The infinite monkey theorem states that a monkey hitting keys at random on a typewriter keyboard for an infinite amount of time will almost surely type a given text, such as the complete works of William Shakespeare. 

Product

This is the end result that shows what we wish our customers/partners to use. It may be a tangible physical product, Software UI/Mobile App or maybe even just background API’s, but it needs to have a defined state when it can be considered complete. We may think of just being related to specifications of functionality, but it goes beyond that to understand why the product should even exist or is needed.

 In short among other things, to be successful we need people who are skilled and motivated, who follow the processes and believe in the product they are working on.

More on each of these aspects in subsequent posts.

The article was first published in Mr. Prashantha Sawhney’s LinkedIn Pulse post. The article is reproduced here with the authors permission. The views shared by the author are shared in his personal capacity.
Author
Prashantha Sawhney

Results-driven engineering professional with ~17 years of experience in leading high performance product teams

TRIVENI: A remote patient monitoring solution via @msharmas – Part 1

/ PRODUCT MANAGEMENT / 10 minutes of reading

TRIVENI, a remote patient monitoring solution that is a confluence of three aspects of patient information: 

Data | Medical Devices | Connectivity

Introduction

Just the other day we heard the SpaceX rocket zoom off to the space to deliver a satellite to the geospatial orbit, Rosberg won the 2016 russian grand prix & Mars rover continuously transmitted the images and vital parameters from millions of miles away in the space

The above three scenarios present the ability to stream data in realtime to a base station providing the ability to remotely monitor the performance of a space-craft, a formula 1 car and a remote autonomous vehicle.

Similarly consider the following use cases in relation to a patient in a Healthcare setting:

  • patient information in a Hospital
  • patient in an ambulance or
  • patient under homecare

presents use cases that require remote monitoring of patient information. 

The existing technological paradigms such as IoT, data streaming analytics, connectivity & interoperability allow for a framework to allow for remote patient monitoring in each of the three Healthcare use cases

TRIVENI

I would like to propose TRIVENI, a remote patient monitoring solution that is a confluence of three aspects of patient information

  • DATA
  • MEDICAL DEVICES
  • CONNECTIVITY

Triveni proposes to implement a plug-n-play framework that will allow for easy connectivity between healthcare information sources.

The etymology of the word TRIVENI in Sanskrit means “where three rivers meet”. Similarly, the three aspects of Patient Information need to be integrated to meet the requirements of a remote patient monitoring solution

Focus areas of TRIVENI

Initially to showcase the Proof-Of-Concept for the solution, the above three focus areas will be considered to present as the use cases. Each of the three focus areas present the ability to test the confluence of three aspects of Patient Information defined above

  • Cardiology
    • MI
    • Chest pain
  • Neurology
    • Stroke
    • Head Injury
    • Epilepsy
  • Emergency Services
    • Trauma

Need for TRIVENI

The Tower of Babel (Pieter Bruegel the Elder, c. 1563), a metaphor for the challenges existing in medical device semantic interoperability today

Current Landscape

  • Piecemeal integration creating information silos; leading to difficulty in sharing patient information
  • Silos unable to deliver real-time patient data reliably; leading to lack of data synchronization to ensure latest  time-aligned data
  • Vendor Dependent solutions; leading to internal battlegrounds
  • Lack of semantic interoperability between systems; leading to a tower of babel situation in medical device semantic interoperability
  • Captive investments by healthcare facilities in existing medical devices leading to a long time before the medical devices can be replaced with newer systems with easier connectivity features

The Remote Patient Monitoring Process Flow

 

Typical Remote Patient Monitoring process (adapted from Center for Technology and Aging)

The Center for Technology and Aging indicates a 5 – Step process for Remote Patient Monitoring. The 5 steps are essential to deliver a continuous flow of patient related information to the remote base station monitoring a patient(s) in any of the use cases or the focus areas presented earlier

The Remote Patient Monitoring Process Flow Mapped with TRIVENI Framework Components


It becomes imperative for the solution to incorporate these founding principles of a remote monitoring process into any framework/ product of such a nature. The process steps get implemented in the TRIVENI framework, allowing for the continuous monitoring of patient information from the various connected systems.

The processes allow for a modular approach to the Product Definition of the TRIVENI framework, with the ability for each component of the platform to evolve as dictated by its internal technology and thus enables each component to incorporate newer technology paradigms as and when they present themselves

The TRIVENI Components are

  1. TRIVENI Connect ®
    1. A programmable Connector that allows the transmission of data from the connected medical device
    2. Supports BLE, Wireless technologies
  2. TRIVENI  Hub ®
    1. A Medical Device Data Aggregator that has the ability to receive data from the TRIVENI Connect and transmit the patient vital data streams to the TRIVENI Exchange
    2. Supports 2G, 3G, Wifi, 4G networks
  3. TRIVENI  Exchange ®
    1. TRIVENI Exchange is a secure, reliable patient vital data store that can seamlessly transmit data received from TRIVENI Hub to TRIVENI Apps
    2. SSL Security, supports interoperability, Data Delivery to TRIVENI Apps or Connected EHR Systems (via HL7)
  4. TRIVENI Apps ®
    1. TRIVENI Apps have the ability to securely receive identified patient’s Medical Data from the TRIVENI Exchange
    2. TRIVENI Apps are delivered on Android, iOS, Web-based platforms


TRIVENI Connect

The TRIVENI Connect is a device that acts as a converter that allows any medical device to connect to the TRIVENI system. The Connect device for instance will be connected to a Patient Monitor via the RJ45, RS232-to-USB converter.
Once connected, the TRIVENI Connect will automatically download the relevant driver from the TRIVENI HUB, that allows for the Patient Data Stream from the Monitor to be streamed. Additional features of the TRIVENI Connect are: 

  • Has the ability to Fetch Data from the connected Device
    • No. of Manufacturers
    • No. of Devices
    • One TRIVENI Connect per Device
  • Convert Data from Device by encoding Device Data with Following information
    • Device ID, Manufacturer ID
    • Device Type
    • Patient ID
    • Ambulance ID/ Hospital ID
  • The TRIVENI Device Should be configurable with the above data. Additional capabilities of the TRIVENI Connect are:
    • Allow for Access Point Configuration
    • Via PC/ Via mobile device
    • Configure the TRIVENI Exchange IP
    • Send Data to TRIVENI Exchange
  • Software Upgrade:
    • Via PC
    • Over the Air
  • Linux Based, WiFi USB Dongle with a RS232 – USB Converter

TRIVENI HUB

The TRIVENI HUB is a device that acts as a data aggregator device at the remote location. All the Patient Data streams from various connect devices are routed to the HUB.

The HUB can be configured via a mobile app. Using the mobile app the users will be able to configure various aspects of the TRIVENI HUB like the internet connectivity, TRIVENI Connect linked to the HUB, Username and password configuration of the HUB & Connect devices, Store and forward configuration to name a few.
 
The HUB device has the following features: 

  • Is a WiFi Router + Cellular Modem
  • Has the functionality to work as a patient data stream aggregator with a store and forward feature
  • Has multiple SIM slots or Multiple USB ports for Broadband Connectivity
  • In Ambulance:
    • Will Work as a WiFi Router Access Point for the TRIVENI Connect
    • Will work as a Cellular Modem for Transmitting the data to the TRIVENI Exchange
  • In Hospital:
    • Will work as a WiFi Router Access Point for the TRIVENI Connect
    • Will connect with the Hospital LAN to connect to the Internet
  • Has the ability to store and forward patient data
  • Data streams will be prioritized based on the QoS of network connection
  • Ability to send data packets over multiple networks to reduce packet loss
  • Data aggregation from multiple types of sources other than TRIVENI Connects
  • Maintains the security of the data-on-move over wire and when data-stationary when within the TRIVENI Hub by enabling security protocols (SSL) and encryption of data

TRIVENI EXCHANGE

The TRIVENI EXCHANGE is a Medical Data+Media Server that can be configured as a Virtual / Physical Server. The EXCHANGE has RTP/ RTSP/ RTCP Capabilities for Live Streaming of the Patient Data Streams from each of the HUBs connected to the EXCHANGE. 
The features of the TRIVENI Exchange are 
  • Site Configuration: Allows the Creation of an Identity for a Client (Ambulance Services/ Hospital Provider)
  • Identification/ Allocation of IP Address (Destination IP for Medical Data Streams) for the TRIVENI Exchange
  • Allows the configuration of the TRIVENI Connect’s to stream data to the Identified IP Address
  • Has the ability to update the TRIVENI Connect / TRIVENI Exchange Firmware OTA
  • Has the ability to receive Voice and Data Streams
  • Has the ability to enable Live Streaming of Data, Video and Voice to TRIVENI Apps
  • Linux Based system
  • Virtual/ Physical Server
  • 128-bit Encryption, https, 2-factor authentication enabled
  • Can be Configured for each client in a multi-tenant server configuration.
  • Has a Medical Data Controller module to identify the source and destination of the medical data streams
  • Ability to allow store and forward data on demand
  • Allows data push or pull configurations for the TRIVENI Components
  • Maintains the “device” drivers for various types of patient sources

TRIVENI APPs

The TRIVENI APP is an android or iOS based app. There are two APPs that come with the TRIVENI framework. One APP is for configuring the remote configuration for the connect and the hub devices at the location for the client

Another APP is for configuring the Exchange and for viewing the data being streamed from the various devices connected to the patients in the remote locations

  • Enables Care Anywhere
  • Web-based, Android or iOS based apps
  • Allows for a two way communication between devices
  • Free to download app on the App Store
  • Allows the user to authenticate her credentials
  • Allows two way communication between the Apps between two users
  • Ensures the reliability of the data
  • Security enabled to ensure patient data authenticity
  • TRIVENI Apps will be developed as web-based and subsequently as native apps
  • TRIVENI apps will incorporate the usability guidelines for the healthcare based apps
  • TRIVENI apps can be configured for data push or pull options
  • TRIVENI apps enabled with security and data encryption profiles
  • There are two types of TRIVENI Apps: TRIVENI HUB & TRIVENI EXCHANGE apps to configure remote and base components

Interoperability Considerations for Medical Peripherals

If one was to trace the progression of delivery of printer drivers, it presents an interesting case study regarding how hardware-software interoperability has progressed over the years in the IT industry. And studying these aspects help us to, hopefully in the future define the way Interoperability in the Healthcare Industry should be handled.

Printers have been essential hardware devices that are connected to the software platform (OS) via various types of connectivity platforms, and service the productivity needs of the organisation.

Lets consider the various Printer installation processes we have seen in the past

  1. CD with OS compatible drivers: Printers started out as peripherals that required a specific driver to be installed on the system (PC/ Laptop/ Server) that was going to be connected to the printer, via a printer cable
  2. OS with Pre-installed Printer Drivers: Then we progressed to the OS itself having a list of compatible drivers that enabled the OS to auto-detect the type of printer or peripheral that was connected to the system. This also allowed for network printers to be installed in the network and allowed for the print server to have all the relevant drivers installed just on that server. PCs in the network wanting to use the printer resource, just needed to send the document to the print server.
  3. Cloud Printers: Now a days, it is possible to connect the printer to the cloud via HP-ePrint or google printer services and access the printer from anywhere in the world.

Device & Software Interoperability

Taking learning from the way peripherals interoperability has been handled in the IT industry, Healthcare Interoperability should be a de-facto feature that should be present in most systems

Interoperability needs to be made as a plug-n-play feature in the Healthcare Services and Solutions. What are the various “Peripherals” that need to be connected in the Healthcare Industry?

  •     Healthcare Information Management Systems
  •     Medical Devices
  •     Laboratory Devices
  •     Radiology Devices
  •     Medical Apps

Additional Thoughts on Interoperability

Now the idea for defining the progression of a hardware connectivity w.r.t. The Printer device, is to try and define how medical device connectivity & interoperability should be enabled in the future

Currently, Interoperability is a “Service” that is offered as part of the implementation process by the system integrator or the vendor of the healthcare software. The point is, why should the customer bear the cost of “connecting” the hardware and software OR two software’s within an organisation
In Healthcare we are working towards providing such seamless and plug-n-play connectivity between EMRs, medical devices and now a days, additionally the  mobile health applications.

Suggested Reading

  1. Unlocking the potential of the Internet of Things | McKinsey on Healthcare – http://ow.ly/ykoy300oNJp
  2. 10 most in-demand Internet of Things Skills – CIO – Slideshow – http://www.cio.com/article/3072132/it-skills-training/10-most-in-demand-internet-of-things-skills.html#slide1
  3. 12 Quantified Self Public Health symposium 2014 report: http://quantifiedself.com/symposium/Symposium-2014/QSPublicHealth2014_Report.pdf  (PDF)
  4. Remote Patient Monitoring Lets Doctors Spot Trouble Early – WSJ http://ow.ly/3rHJ10099JP 
  5. What’s New In Indian Hospitals: A Hi-Tech ICU And How It’s Saving http://ow.ly/oPoV300zlpo 
  6. Study: Remote Patient Monitoring Saves $8K Per Patient Annually http://ow.ly/gqy3301Agwh 
  7. Lantronix on “Why Every Healthcare Device Should be Connected to the Internet of Things” | Symmetry Electronics – http://bit.ly/1XC2V0b
  8. #IoT software development requires an integrated DevOps platform – http://ow.ly/eg6p1006N
  9. Remote patient monitoring technology becoming imperative for providers http://ow.ly/xMK4100cAXH #IoT #HITsmIND
  10. Remote patient monitoring: What CIOs can do to make it happen – Health IT Pulse http://ow.ly/w7W3100cAY0 #IoT #HITsmIND
  11. Remote #Patient Monitoring: 8 Trending #Healthcare Infographics https://t.co/drZJmP0fVk
  12. Five innovative examples of #mHealth and #telehealth technologies http://ow.ly/WMFn100cAYk
  13. Big data fuels #telemedicine, remote patient monitoring http://ow.ly/rg3n100cAZ4 
  14. OpenICE – Open-Source Integrated Clinical Environment https://www.openice.info/
  15. Fundamentals of Data Exchange | Continua http://www.continuaalliance.org/node/456
  16. Global Patient Monitoring Devices Market Analysis & Trends – Industry Forecast to 2025 – http://www.researchandmarkets.com/publication/mf3oj2t/3757021

I am looking for partnerships, sponsors to develop this solution. If interested kindly get in touch via email: manish.sharma@hcitexpert.com

Author
Manish Sharma

Founder HCITExpert.com, Digital Health Entrepreneur.

Additional Articles by the Author

  1. Health ID as Patient IDs unifier in India  by Manish Sharma  
  2. 5 Steps towards an Integrated Digital Health Experience in Indian Healthcare in 2016 
  3. Top Healthcare & Digital Health Predictions for 2016
  4. Zen Clinicals: An Activity & Workflow based solution (1 of 3)
  5. RFID in Healthcare: Usecases from Hospitals
  6. 10 Solutions for the Healthcare IT Fringes

From More Paper to More Checkboxes, Whats Ideal in Health IT?

/ PRODUCT MANAGEMENT / 5 minutes of reading


Was in a tweetchat sometime ago on the Need for Time Management for Practitioners (physicians, nurses, allied health professionals) in Healthcare, by the HealthXPh communities Weekly Tweetchat, Every Saturday.

During the conversation it was really interesting to hear from the practicing doctors regarding how they have to manage their time and work towards scheduling themselves around their HealthIT systems and their patient care activities.

It was really interesting because, aren’t the Healthcare IT solutions supposed to ease the workload of the users? Arent the solutions supposed to be developed around providing the Time Management activities of the healthcare practitioner?


Which again brings me back to my earlier question, arent the Healthcare IT solutions help the Healthcare Practitioner Manage their time? After all we have taken the paper records and replaced them with the feature rich and innovative healthcare IT solutions.

But then why do we hear the doctors say that they are losing direct face time with the patients?

Why are the nurses unable to find time to keep up with the IT and non-IT related work they are supposed to be doing daily?

In the multiple product development lifecycles that I have been through (and the experience of the reader might be the same or vary) I have found during the requirements phase there are two types of users, the first category are the ones who have perhaps not used a system earlier but would like to implement a healthcare solution. The second category are the ones who have had prior experience working on a solution and would provide their requirements that incorporates the enhancements or the lacunae that the earlier solution had.

I think the EHR systems are in this conundrum right now, wherein they need to fit into these two categories of users and fast. Building products is a capital intensive enterprise and the ‘project management’ practices are always focussed on gathering requirements and completing the project.

But during this ‘Delivery’ process are the requirements of the two categories of users been analysed in a way to deliver solutions that will take into account the needs of the users and come up with a solution paradigm that helps each of these users to ‘Manage’ their time.

Should the solution make a Healthcare Professional work their way around the solution, or should it be the other way.

I think it is this need for the solution to now work around every Healthcare Professional to help them manage their time better that will bring about the version 3.0 of the EHR solutioning.

In the version 3.0 of EHR solutioning multi-disciplinary teams will come together to develop the solutions that work around each users life-at-work and helps them to Manage their tasks in their workplaces.

As indicated in the recently concluded ArabHealth a message went out indicating that “One size does not fit all”

Tweet: 




Extending the analogy to an EHR solution: If there is a uniqueness in treating each patient, it is obvious that the activities that a Doctor or a healthcare professional would do would be unique. At this point I do agree, that the process would perhaps stay same for the 80% of the time, but the datapoints to be presented or captured would perhaps be different from patient to patient. 

I therefore think that the next generation of EHRs should be able to incorporate these variations as part of workflows that allows the solutions to be adoptive to the end-user requirements across specialities. 

Some feature considerations for the next gen EHRs. 

  1. Incorporate Task and Workflow oriented frameworks. The workflow in the hospital is not stationary, it evolves as often as a patient’s condition
  2. Incorporate the Healthcare Practitioner’s daily activities in the workflow, help them manage their time a, and not they working around what the system has to offer. 
  3. OK, so we converted all the paper forms into electronic formats and now have the ability to analyse them. Its now time to bring in cognitive platforms that present to a doctor generated pages that are relevant to a patient. 80% of the forms are not filled in 80% of the patient visits. Then why should all this data be ‘presented’ to be filled for each patient?
  4. At the design time consider the time and motion analysis for each category of user, develop solutions to incorporate their activities. 
  5. EHRs should adopt a multi-form factor delivery approach. Now its clear, the desktops and PCs are here to stay. Go back to the drawing board and develop ‘for-each’ form-factor. A one size fits all or a responsive approach perhaps will not work in the case of the healthcare multi-form factor solutions approach. After all you cannot expect a 5 page form to be answered on a mobile device, just because we can make it responsive. 
  6. Make EHRs with the analytics first approach. Since the first systems, its always been the need to capture the infomation on systems so that we can analyse the data later. Today there should be the need to revise the data structures to meet the demands of analytic and cognitive computing.
Am sure there are more that can be collated, but will keep that for the Zen Clinicals series that I have been working on to define what a next generation EHR should have as core feature set and that is different from what it is today. 

Author

Scroll to Top
Connect
1
👋 Hello
Powered by Joinchat
Hello!! 👋 Manish here, Thanks for visiting The Healthcare IT Experts Blog !! How can i help you?