Genie Solutions Launches TeleConsult in under 2 Weeks with Amazon Chime

For over 25 years, Genie Solutions has provided medical professionals in Australia with tailored software to help them tackle the complexity of running a successful practice. The company’s practice management software (PMS) is specifically designed for medical specialists who need to run their business efficiently while delivering a seamless patient experience, from appointment scheduling and record keeping, to specially customised workflows for medical specialists.

“What we’ve found over the past two decades is that in a high-stress and fast-moving environment like a medical practice, reliability and usability are the ‘pillars’ of supporting software,” says Michael Strachan, head of product at Genie Solutions. “Instead of cramming our software with lots of features that may not end up being used, we deliver a solution that is simple, crafted, and co-designed with practitioners.”

As a result of the company’s dedication to its core value of delivering a great user experience, Genie Solutions has earned a loyal following of more than 21,000 medical practitioners across the country, who consider the software to be their essential driver for a productive and efficient day.

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit Australia, the virus quickly became the most dangerous health threat and demanded urgent medical attention. As cities across the country started to establish policies that restricted physical movement, many patients with pre-existing conditions suddenly found themselves unable to meet with their doctors in person.

“Many of our customers went from seeing their patients face to face 100 percent of the time to zero percent virtually overnight,” says Brenden Conolly, CTO at Genie Solutions. “There was a dire need for us to build, test, and launch a new remote-consultation service from scratch under a time pressure that we’ve never felt before.”

The urgent need for a telehealth service became more prominent when the Australian government extended additional funding support to help practices deliver medical care remotely. In April 2020, Genie Solutions launched TeleConsult, using Amazon Chime SDK, to provide an end-to-end telehealth workflow solution for medical specialists. Amazon Chime was selected as the foundation for three key reasons: the ability to rapidly integrate the solution with Genie Solutions’ existing IT infrastructure, the user-friendliness of the resulting solution, and the fact that the data could be hosted in Australia.

Genie Solutions needed its customer data to remain in Australia, a requirement that was met by the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Cloud, with data hosted in the Asia Pacific (Sydney) Region.

“Much of our infrastructure was already powered by AWS, and it just made sense to tap into Amazon Chime and extend all of the benefits we were already enjoying with AWS in terms of scalability and flexibility,” Conolly adds.

To get the TeleConsult tool up and running, an AWS-led prototyping team was created, comprising Genie Solutions and AWS Support. The prototyping team worked closely and extensively to accelerate the launch of the first iteration of TeleConsult in less than two weeks. The next step for the prototyping team was integrating the service into various platforms and devices. To cater to the various needs of its customers and ensure it can serve all practitioners based on their digital maturity or technology preference, Genie Solutions wanted to offer TeleConsult as traditional desktop software as well as a cloud-based solution on both desktop and mobile devices.

However, this made deployment of TeleConsult trickier. Deploying a new feature for both desktop and mobile environments is typically done at a more measured pace, but the urgent demand for a remote-consultation service meant that speed and scale were essential.

Despite the short timeline in putting the solution together, the prototyping team was able to complete the integration in two to four weeks, overcoming any compatibility concerns. Genie Solutions was able to offer TeleConsult to practitioners in under six weeks, with complete integration in its PMS so specialists could launch a remote consultation session with their patients in just one click. Previously, launching a similar integrated service would have taken the company more than three to six months.

With Amazon Chime, patients didn’t have to download or install any software. Conolly says, “We looked at a range of providers, and many did not satisfy our high standards for usability. We wanted patients to be able to join a consultation by clicking a link and not having to jump through multiple hoops like downloading an app and going through a painful sign-in process. Amazon Chime offered exactly what we needed.”

Genie Solutions’ uncompromising attention to patient experience was validated in the built-in feedback tool of Amazon Chime. More than 90 percent of patients who have used TeleConsult since its launch expressed satisfaction by giving their remote consultation experience a “thumbs up.”

Since its launch, TeleConsult has facilitated more than 8,000 consultation sessions over a span of 600-plus practices.

By relying on AWS capabilities, Genie Solutions is confident in its ability to scale as more practices and patients come on board. It is also leveraging TeleConsult as the first step to building a set of plug-and-play solutions that sit between its AWS Cloud platform and desktop client, so that customers can pick and choose add-ons that work best for their practices.

“TeleConsult has been a valuable addition to our software offerings,” Strachan concludes. “Its successful rollout has enabled our customers to continue serving their patients with minimal interruption and helped us start new conversations on digital transformation.”