Are you a health practitioner in the greater Vancouver area? Until now the information about the available local programs and resources were delivered to you in PDF files and spreadsheets. These documents are very hard to search and update, but now you can simply download the HealthConnection iOS app from the Apple app store or visit HealthConnecBC.ca to obtain that information.
My software company – rmdStudio – was commissioned by Vancouver Coastal Health and Northshore Division of Family Practice to develop this service. rmdStudio provides iOS app development to enterprises, small businesses and nonprofit organizations.
HealthConnection is one of the projects that I am very proud of because it is helping the medical community access the information they need faster and more effectively. Another reason I am so fond of this project is that HealthConnection is developed using the open-source Anahita Knowledge platform that I have founded a few years ago.
We use Anahita as the cloud back-end and API for this service. Anahita is an ideal platform for building knowledge-sharing apps because it stores all data as nodes and graphs and provides a nice RESTful API and JSON format. Anahita literally connects the dots underneath which means users get more insightful and relevant results when they perform a search.
In the HealthConnection website, the social networking aspects of Anahita are only available to the staff who are maintaining the information on the system. Every entry is immediately available via the JSON feed which means all the iPhone apps will always show the most up-to-date information to the users. This is also a good example of a locations graph in Anahita which isn’t yet available in the default distribution.
I am looking forward to seeing the future releases of HealthConnection with a MobileFirst website and using the more advanced search and hashtag features. Anahita will also provide native location graph support which HealthConnection can benefit from.
This project has been so much fun to develop. My special thanks go to the HealthConnection team in Vancouver Coastal Health and North Shore Division of Family Practice for providing my team with this great opportunity.
Do you have a collection of data in PDF and spreadsheets which you want to distribute via a mobile app? Please send us an inquiry and we will be happy to help you too.