Providence Genomics

Platform and Website Design + Development

How a solution goes from a beta test to a sustainable product

Background

Part of the Providence healthcare system, Providence Genomics builds cutting-edge programs including prevention, early detection, and therapeutic programs. Providence Genomics is growing quickly, and all efforts are intended to improve patient care using genomics.

Clinical research has complex resource and staffing requirements to support patient recruitment, education, and consent. Traditionally, a study coordinator guides each patient through a potentially complicated informed consent document and answers questions, before obtaining consent to enroll them in the clinical study. Motivated in part by the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, the Providence Genomics leadership set goals to transfer much of the manual education effort from study coordinators to online content, including recruitment, study descriptions, details about risks and benefits of study participation, actions needed from study participants, and information about the study experience.

Providence owned a technology platform that had been adapted for participant e-consent by affiliated Institute for Systems Biology (ISB). When the COVID pandemic hit, Providence urgently needed to manage e-consent for patient studies while minimizing potential exposures for study staff. Providence and ISB turned to this platform to recruit for several large COVID-19 studies. Following the successful execution of these studies, Providence Genomics recognized an opportunity for the platform to improve processes for several large precision genomics studies that were in the planning stages.

Working together, Providence, ISB, and Genomics teams expanded the platform’s capabilities beyond the COVID-19 study features. These collaborations made the platform more sophisticated, robust, and feature-rich. It was successfully deployed in two ongoing studies (Geno4ME and Galleri), which are lengthy, multi-year studies that engage thousands of patients.

Based on this success, Providence made the decision to further develop the platform for broader use within Genomics, rebranding it as Propel.

“It’s gratifying that other teams looked at what we created through innovative collaborations between developers, designers, and subject matter experts, and saw the value in it.  They recognize that Propel meets a need that nothing else meets.”

Andrew Magis, PhD, Director of Data Science at ISB

The Challenge

The enterprise version of the product’s design needed to make it easy for patients, participants, and researchers to engage in research programs. The technical solution needed to be scalable for use by external partners and customers, and it needed to be sustainable so the number of engaged patients accessing genomic data within Providence could be expanded.

The platform needed significant changes to be marketed to new teams internally and externally. Focus areas included security, compliance, and features to ensure the product could support a broad range of use cases. The Genomics team also had to shift its mindset from meeting the needs of specific users to delighting and exceeding expectations of a broader group of customers.

The Solution

Providence needed a technology partner that could understand the strategy and translate it quickly into a working product. Further, Propel needed a brand identity that could introduce the solution and test its story. Kopius* was selected to help Providence transform Propel into a scalable product by introducing engineering capacity, including specialized design and technology skills to the “in flight” solution.

Kopius rapidly rounded out the engineering, design, content, and project management capabilities of the Propel team, and collaborated with Providence and ISB’s technical teams to build the scalable Propel SaaS product and website. Valance capabilities included product ownership, data visualization, and quality assurance.

Kopius provided a nearshore team with UX/UI design, quality assurance, data visualization, product management and strategy, and project management nearshore capabilities based in the US, and top engineering talent based in Latin America.

Kopius cost-effectively focused on deliverables and building the platform’s capabilities. By engaging Kopius, the Propel product could be developed without competing with internal initiatives that could pull the Providence engineering team in different directions. This was critical because the timeline to meet customer needs was tight and could not tolerate being reprioritized behind other internal initiatives.

The Propel platform is a complex technology stack based on multiple microservices and integrations that support a rich set of features. Shortly after onboarding, the Kopius team started designing and implementing a single-sign-on (SSO) capability across critical microservices, identity management tools, and study management tools.

“The Kopius Project Manager was incredibly helpful in helping us bridge the gap with new users. He brought a rigor of process, and I could rely on him to meet timelines, listen and understand requirements, and deliver results.”

Jon Clemens, Director of Programs, Providence Genomics

Results

Kopius’ involvement enabled the Providence and ISB teams to shift from a “start-up” mindset to sustainable, best practices following a continuous integration and deployment model.

With Kopius’ support, Providence Genomics was able to deliver: an enterprise software product and a set of websites that educate patients through dynamic media-rich content about available studies based on eligibility criteria; a platform able to manage patient identities, enrollment, and electronic consent in accordance with  Institutional Review Board (IRB)-approved protocols; and functionality for researchers to track and engage with patients, collect data, and return results.

“The genomics industry is highly innovative- and this project required a true collaboration of exceptional talent. No one is naïve enough to think that one org has all the answers. We worked together to lay out a plan and we’re continuing to collaborate with Kopius to meet the needs of this dynamic industry,”

Cheryl Isen, Head of Marketing, Providence Genomics

*Work was performed under the previous business name, Valence

Boeing

Data-Driven Proof-of-Concept B2B Application

A working application allowed Boeing to demonstrate key features and gauge interest in a new offering

Challenge

Boeing is a large global company with a heavily siloed organizational structure and process-rich manufacturing environment.   

Modern airplanes are basically flying IoT sensor arrays, with almost every part of the plane capturing data during a flight, which is downloaded for analysis by the airline when a plane lands.  This data contains a wealth of potential insights, such as performance trends that can lead to more accurate maintenance planning. This data becomes even more valuable when it is aggregated with other airline-specific data as well as supplier data so it can be used to identify trends and issues early, to the benefit of the industry.

Of course, much of this data is also proprietary and demands high security so that different airlines and suppliers are only sharing what they are willing to share and can maintain control over who sees what and for how long.

Boeing needed a better way to share data between organizations in a highly controlled and secure way.

The company wanted a proof-of-concept that would demonstrate an interaction between Boeing, an airline, and a parts supplier, and the value of this aggregated data. It was needed under a tight timeline, and it needed to demonstrate innovation and customer-focused development to Boeing’s customers.

boeing

The Solution

Because this project was a new type of endeavor, Boeing did not have an established process internally and selected Kopius* as its innovation partner, benefiting from Kopius’ nearshore engineering services, with team members based in the US and in Argentina.

Kopius conducted a series of client interviews and design sessions with key stakeholders to understand current processes and capabilities for sharing this type of data.  Because this was a new capability, there were many gaps and unknowns in the process.  Our team led the customer through envisioning sessions to develop wireframes for key features in the solution while also working closely with Microsoft to integrate with existing technology solutions including Microsoft Synapse, Purview, and an unreleased Microsoft product that creates and enforces contracts when data is shared securely.

Boeing Screenshot

Results

The solution was a responsive web application hosted in Azure that allowed users to access, share, and analyze data with airline customers and suppliers in a secure and trusted environment.

The result was a working application that allowed Boeing to demonstrate these key features to customers to gauge interest in becoming an early adopter of this new offering. The effort also enabled Boeing to collect early user feedback to inform the exploration of new revenue streams by monetizing existing data. Boeing was able to conduct market analysis rapidly and inexpensively without the long and expensive process of launching a new service.

*Work was performed under the previous business name, Valence

Spaceflight

Enterprise Application Design and Development

Background

Spaceflight is a premier launch services and mission management provider, offering routine, cost-effective access to space.

With the growing industry of smallsats, the demand for routine, cost-effective access to space has increased exponentially. Demand, coupled with the growing number of launch vehicle providers, created an opportunity for Spaceflight to assist in identifying, booking, and managing rideshare launches.

With a suite of products and services including satellite infrastructure, rideshare launch offerings, payload integration, and global communications networks, Spaceflight enables organizations to get launched, achieving their mission goals – on time and on budget.

Kopius has worked with Spaceflight since 2020 when we built Book My Launch and the first iteration of Mission Control, which is a task management and ticketing system that allows Spaceflight Mission Managers to manage the tasks such as testing, documentation, and communication.  Mission Control also provides a Resource Center, giving customers access to reference documents, templates, and information about their Spaceflight team.

Spaceflight smallsat

Challenge

Prior to Mission Control, Mission Managers had to patch together ad hoc management solutions, leaning heavily on decentralized documents, emails, texts, and endless phone calls.

Spaceflight needed a system to link the self-service model of Book My Launch to the backend systems used by Mission Managers. The company also needed to enable Mission Managers to support more customers as the business scaled and to provide customers with a single source to view all their mission information.

Spaceflight’s team had a strong vision for the end product and its business impact but had not previously worked on a software development effort of this nature. Spaceflight needed a partner that could guide them through the process.

Spaceflight continued its engagement with Kopius, building upon the knowledge and relationships built during the Book My Launch project.

“We could tell that Kopius* was excited about this project and was really engaged,” says Kristen Smithson, Spaceflight vice president of business operations, “When the whole team came to the office and gave a presentation, they spoke to all our needs, and we were impressed. Kopius was able to speak to the backend setup as well as how we would design it. The end-to-end capability made a difference.”

Solution

Mission Control was developed in a phased approach, with Phase 1 relying on out-of-the-box software for task management and Phase 2 relying on custom-built software for Spaceflight’s unique workflows. The phased approach enabled faster process improvement and provided user feedback that contributed to a more successful software solution in Phase 2.  

“Our primary objective was to simplify the user experience to support the adoption of the tools,” said Alice Watkins, Kopius Technical Project Manager, “In addition to adding features to make the system easier to use, we were ruthlessly focused on streamlining the experience. We improved the ease-of-use, the booking process, and functionality for Mission Control.”

Because Mission Control’s intent is to digitize and streamline processes, understanding those processes was critical to success.  As is the case with many fast-moving and young companies, processes had been defined at a high level but had not yet been documented at the level of granularity needed to design and develop the right software solution and user experience.

Kopius conducted dozens of research sessions, bringing designers and engineers together with Spaceflight users to explore processes and user needs. Q & A sessions were insightful and benefited from Kopius participants with strong user experience practices with deep engineering skills. Part of Kopius’ role was to capture ideas that were still forming among the Spaceflight teams and to advise Spaceflight about how to use those ideas to create a better solution. These working sessions revealed the “hidden steps” in Spaceflight’s processes, which are critical to achieving adoption by Mission Managers.

Kopius also conducted user experience research and provided UX design, interface design, software engineering, testing, and QA to Spaceflight. In addition to features that allow Mission Managers to manage customers, create tasks, and easily see what the customer can see, Kopius also built filtering functionality so Mission Managers can easily manage their work and assignments.

In Phase 2, Kopius restructured tasks and workflows, created task management systems, built a notification system that triggers emails when a customer submits a task, improved the user database, and implemented multifactor authentication via text messages to increase security.

Following the release of Phase 2, Kopius collected user feedback for future enhancements and conducted internal training and client onboarding.

“I appreciate that Kopius was good at guiding us through the technical aspects of the project while also always treating us as equals. We felt like engaged and respected partners,” said Tony Frego, vice president of mission management, “Kopius also got to know our business at a detailed level, which is not easy. It’s cool that Kopius can talk about orbits with us now.”

Spaceflight Mission Control

Results

With Book My Launch and Mission Control, Spaceflight is transforming its business and the aerospace commercial space flight industry.

The Mission Control tool is scalable, flexible, trackable, and provides better records, impressively advancing Spaceflight from its previous ad hoc systems. Further, the onboarding of new Mission Managers is more consistent, and Mission Managers can save time and effort compared to previous processes.

And because Mission Managers can better manage customers, customers are expected to have a better experience with Spaceflight and demonstrate higher satisfaction – ultimately leading to future bookings and a stronger business.

*Kopius performed this work under it’s previously known business name, Valence.

Fortune 1000 Healthcare Company

Data Strategy, Web Application, and Recommendation Engine

Challenge

Hospital administrators and staff are under intense pressure to optimize performance within facilities while delivering best-in-class care to patients. This highly regulated industry has an abundance of data, but it’s often collected and managed in disparate systems by people with ranging levels of proficiency.

One opportunity to improve hospital efficiency is to optimize the scheduling of operating rooms, surgical procedures, and services.

We were approached by an advanced SaaS-based healthcare data analytics company that needed to use existing data feeds to improve the scheduling of operations for a hospital that used its systems. Because of the sensitive nature of EHR data, security was a priority.

business process management

Solution

Kopius delivered a web application including a scheduling recommendation engine. On the back-end, the web application relied on a Paas-based solution that analyzed trends using artificial intelligence.

First, we transformed and normalized the hospital’s robust pipeline of raw and structured EHR data. Using that data, we developed a recommendation engine that prompts hospital staff to take actions based on key data indicators.

Then we designed and developed a custom web-app to present and manipulate data, including the scheduling recommendations.

Results

The solution provided hospital staff with a decision support tool capable of improving room scheduling and revealed trends and opportunities for efficiency over time. These improvements resulted in improved patient care and hospital efficiency.

*Kopius performed this work under its previously known business name, Valence.

Healthcare Non-Profit

Clinical Trials Healthcare Research Accelerator

Background

Our client is a national not-for-profit healthcare system committed to improving the health of all people. The system includes hospitals, clinics, and a comprehensive range of services.

Among its services, the client’s organization offered a web portal where donors, patients, providers, and research scientists could look for clinical trials to improve patient health outcomes, called the Healthcare Research Accelerator.

The Healthcare Research Accelerator is a special project because it is used by doctors across the globe who are working with patients who are out of options. These doctors want to help their patients, and they have to be creative, so they seek out the latest trials in hopes they can enroll their patients and get them access to promising therapies. These doctors are often under a lot of pressure when they come to this tool, and they need a tool that is easy to use.

Challenge

The original search tool was designed and developed long ago by in-house resources, and because of considerable gaps in functionality and usability, platform support was going to end. Further, the design and development team that had originated the portal had disbanded and there was no documentation about its architecture or functionality. Our client needed to replace the Healthcare Research Accelerator with a new solution for this critical service.

The accelerator is incredibly important, but the search function had coding flaws and had reached a point where patients and providers didn’t like or trust the tool – because our client’s organization is on a mission to improve patient outcomes, it was urgent that we deliver a better way to connect people with clinical trial information.

Solution

Thanks to our significant experience working with this client on other digital projects, Kopius* had gained the client’s trust and was engaged to re-platform the clinical trials Healthcare Research Accelerator tool. Services included user experience design, user interface design, engineering, quality assurance, and deployment support.

Because of the loss of user confidence, change management practices were woven into our approach. From discovery to user experience design, and through user acceptance testing, we engaged a variety of users and provided visibility into our thinking and process. This rebuilt trust in the tool’s potential and helped to improve market sentiment.

“If you want a deployment to be adopted, you must invest time and energy in communication and collaboration with your users. The change management plan needs to address stakeholder communication and internal business processes.”

Glen Lewis, Kopius technical project manager

One of the first stages of the effort was to reverse engineer the structure of the previous iteration of the platform to identify data sources and reveal the cause of the failed search results. We conducted a four-week assessment to document how the platform was built.

Understanding why the previous platform was failing was an important step in rebuilding trust among users that this new iteration would perform as expected.

The assessment unearthed that the previous platform relied on a search function in what amounts to a continuous document. Kopius engineers built a new database according to industry best practices, which is more flexible and can scale and be managed over time.

Our data team also built custom logic for the clinical trial searches to address the unique and specific needs of users. The updated search function uses criteria to return highly relevant results without requiring an exact string of words.

We simplified the XML ingestion process by reducing and consolidating a three-step process that moved data across multiple servers to a single drag-and-drop interface.

The User Acceptance Testing period (UAT) included additional time and resources to engage users and build trust in the new tool. We prepared users for the UAT by explaining what they should expect and how we expect the tool to work before they tested it. The UAT process was divided into three testing events, and each event was followed by a detailed review of issues identified, including what happened, why it happened, and how it would be fixed, further building trust in the system.

Upon completion, we provided comprehensive and detailed documentation of the new platform and how it is built so it can be referenced, integrated, and updated more easily in the future.

Results

The new Healthcare Research Accelerator tool is easy to use, and users are excited to use it. The database has also become the primary source for clinical trial information across client websites. The design was seamless with the client’s updated brand strategy, and the platform nested within the larger brand strategy perfectly.

Through our collaborative process and open communication, we won over users who were skeptical that our project was merely to re-skin a dysfunctional tool.

Kopius’ efforts to build elegant mapping logic will help doctors and patients easily find the trials they need, which will hopefully enable patients to overcome their sickness and feel better.

“This project was not easy. You handled our requests with grace and with integrity, and we’re so thankful to you for this hard work.”

Client Project Director

*Kopius performed this work under its previously known business name, Valence.

EdTech

Software Delivered to Market 225% Faster

Nearshore Development Reduces Labor Costs by 40%

Challenge

Our client is a Chicago-based education technology (edtech) company that creates K-12 writing software and curriculum to help students become strong critical thinkers. Highlighted as a “game-changing educational software” by Bill Gates, controlled studies also show that its product helps students with reading and writing growth. The company teaches critical thinking through argumentative writing via its personalized literacy platform for English, language arts, science, social studies, and math.

This edtech startup had a unique opportunity to distribute its products to several schools. The company had a small and highly skilled engineering team, but did not have the internal resources to scale up the product in time to serve this high volume of school customers. If the company missed the opportunity to ready its products for this opportunity, a competitor would win the work.

As an early-stage company, they needed a cost-effective solution as they sought to build an intuitive SaaS platform for teachers, students, and principals.

ThinkCERCA

The Solution

We were able to meet this client’s needs for scale, speed, and cost-effectiveness by engaging our nearshore engineering team. Based in Argentina, we were able to match working hours, and integrate quickly with the internal team. We provided an autonomous team that included Ember.js, React.js, and Ruby on Rails developers, a business analyst, and QA resources to build an evolved teacher lesson library and grading experience. Our team provided end-to-end service and guidance to the client by developing the product roadmap, supplying resources, and performing QA.

Results

Our client scaled-up quickly, moving from two developers to three parallel teams in just four months. They reduced time-to-market by 225% thanks to streamlined engineering and collaboration capabilities. They saved 40% on resource costs over a three-year period, compared to estimated costs to staff the team internally from Chicago.

Robotics Engineering Services Company

Robotics Scheduling Software

In 2020, the world changed forever because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The sudden shutdown of office and work environments was a shock, and the challenge only deepened when business leaders tried to understand how to introduce employees back into their in-person commercial spaces.

Challenge

We were approached by an engineering company that specializes in advanced technologies because they wanted to explore ways to use its robotic solutions to increase health and safety outcomes in workspaces and for its customers.

This company had built a disinfection Mobile Industrial Robot (MiR) by attaching industrial-grade UV lights to an existing robotic base. Customers could activate this robot when spaces were unoccupied to sanitize and disinfect work areas thanks to pre-built software to build and run sanitizing activities.

The challenge was that there was no mechanism to schedule those sanitizing activities. Our client’s customers also needed to schedule activities in advance with frequently recurring options.

Our client needed to address the scheduling issue quickly because, with COVID-19, speed-to-market was critical.

Solution

Kopius was engaged to develop scheduling software to run alongside the MiR software. The scheduling software was developed inside a docker container which ran on the Windows-based PC installed in the MiR base.

With this software, users could connect to the disinfection robot WiFi network and easily create activities or schedules by selecting from a list of existing activities and adding options like start time and recurrence.

Users could also check the status of the robot and run other MiR utilities from the same page.

Behind the scenes, the new scheduling software periodically checked the list of scheduled activities to ensure they launched as planned. A reporting function was added so users could see what was scheduled to run and what was recently accomplished.

Technologies used include Doctor, JavaScript Express WebApp, Mongo Database, NPM Agenda Service, NPM AgendaDash Service, and MiR Robot APIs.

Results

Our client completed the UVC disinfection robot ahead of schedule and delivered this highly anticipated product to the market creating a new revenue stream and meeting an important health and safety need.

Architecture

*Kopius performed this work under its previously known business name, Valence.

Space Needle

Virtual Reality Application

Since its grand opening in 1962, the Space Needle is one of the most recognizable landmarks in the world. This treasured Seattle icon is recognized for its 520′ saucer-shaped “top house”, which offers visitors a 360-degree panoramic view of Seattle and its surrounding landscape.

The Space Needle underwent a multi-year $100M renovation, including a glass rotating floor, to preserve the landmark and inspire the next generation of visitors.

Challenge

Because the preservation and renovation project was prolonged over multiple years, the Space Needle needed to engage and excite the market about the upcoming experience, even when the first-person live experience was unavailable.

To build anticipation for its re-opening, Space Needle also needed to attract media and influencer excitement around updates like the thrilling all-glass rotating floor.

Seattle Space Needle and Mount Rainier

The Solution

Kopius was engaged to create a 4D Virtual Reality immersive experience that blends drone footage, 360-degree panoramas, beautifully detailed models, and digitally triggered physical elements into a custom-built stage.

The experience incorporated advanced VR locomotion techniques to give users the illusion of walking through large-scale spaces, and physical queues such as haptics and windpipes to give users the sensation of standing on a rotating floor or sitting in the open air.

Results

The Space Needle met its pre-launch press and influencer goals, driving multiple articles in technology, tourism, and local publications such as GeekWire, Facility Executive Magazine, King5 News, VRFocus, and The Puget Sound Business Journal.

*Kopius performed this work under its previously known business name, Valence.

Geekwire

“Seeing is believing, but not really—feeling is believing,” Olson said. “And that’s why we created this.” – Karen Olson, COO of the Space Needle

PrecisionHawk

Cloud Enablement

PrecisionHawk is a commercial drone and data company, dedicated to empowering enterprises with actionable intelligence about their physical assets. PrecisionHawk applies artificial intelligence (AI) to its drone footage to create aerial data. PrecisionHawk serves the agriculture industry, and in fact its name comes from the name “wine hawk” because its first drones chased pest birds from vineyards.

Challenge

PrecisionHawk needed to improve its data architecture to further optimize its AI and client results. While PrecisionHawk has an industry-leading team of internal technologists, the specific challenge with its data structure required specialized skills.

Solution

Kopius* was engaged to analyze PrecisionHawk’s data architecture and make recommendations for improvement, and then implement those recommendations.

After a discovery process, Kopius proposed an Amazon Web Services (AWS) Data Pipeline as a web service that would reliably process and move data between different AWS compute and storage services, as well as on-premises data sources, at specified intervals.  We then moved on-premise ETL (extract, transform, and load) processes to an AWS Data Pipeline. The solution uses the AWS cloud for data processing and transformation in a data pipeline.

Results

The solution helped PrecisionHawk to easily create complex data processing workloads that are fault-tolerant, repeatable, and highly available. It allows resource availability, managing inter-task dependencies, retrying transient failures or timeouts in individual tasks, or creating a failure notification system. Using the cloud, it also allows the client to move and process data that was previously locked up in on-premises data silos.

*Kopius performed this work under its previously known business name, Valence.

Innovation Lab

Voice & Chat with Natural Language Processing

At Kopius*, we help enterprise customers understand and apply next-generation technologies in a smart and innovative way to advance business goals. We often experiment with these technologies within our own business, testing and tweaking how we design, develop, and deploy innovation. It often begins by identifying a simple challenge.

Challenge

After conducting research and interviews with our clients in healthcare, we identified an opportunity to address an operational bottleneck resulting from patient confusion around treatment and appointment information.

In healthcare settings, patients are often responsible for managing their own care plan. This can include being accountable for understanding their health or diagnosis, navigating healthcare systems to identify specialists, and scheduling their own care. Because of the variables and their novice understanding of the healthcare system, time is lost to scheduling errors and misunderstandings about process and providers.

The Solution

Our innovation lab had previously experimented with voice and chat frameworks for other client projects. We decided to use those frameworks as the foundation for a voice and chat enabled personal assistant that could use artificial intelligence to support patients as they navigate their care.

The goals were to provide patients with a personalized experience, providing assistance specific to their care throughout the full lifecycle of an appointment. Features included driving directions, reminders, custom Q&A, and follow–up information.

We extended our voice and chat framework with a domain-specific natural language processor and symptom diagnosis engine.

Results

The proof of concept proved effective in supporting patients quickly. The framework was tested to carry out diagnoses on 520 unique patients. Based on keyboard inputs, the engine took an average of 41 seconds to give an accurate result. Voice inputs also resulted in an impressive 53-second average time to a correct answer.

*Kopius performed this work under its previously known business name, Valence.