We’ve deployed Connect for Life in the cloud on multiple occasions, increasing the scalability of Johnson & Johnson’s mobile platform designed to connect healthcare professionals with their patients, and help them provide more effective care.
The Client
Johnson & Johnson (J&J) is a multinational corporation that is one of the world’s largest and most comprehensive healthcare companies. It operates in three major segments: pharmaceuticals, medical devices, and customer health products. J&J also engages in the development of digital health solutions that involve telemedicine, remote monitoring, and patient engagement software, which is the core of our cooperation.
Connect for Life
First launched in 2016, Connect for Life is a mobile platform designed to support remote healthcare around the world. It allows healthcare professionals to more effectively connect with their patients, providing them with continuous treatment. Communicating with patients via Interactive Voice Response (IVR) and SMS text messages gives the physicians real-time access to their feedback, increasing the chances of quick and more accurate reactions. The system also supports the patient’s treatment by sending medication and appointment reminders. The current version of Connect for Life is an OpenMRS distribution.
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The Challenge
The client faced challenges in expanding and maintaining the Connect for Life platform across multiple countries with diverse technological landscapes.
There was a need for a solution that would allow the client to deploy different instances of Connect for Life in a fast and repeatable way – a flexible, secure, and scalable infrastructure capable of integrating with various telecommunication providers, all while ensuring compliance with regional data protection laws and reducing operational overhead.
The Solution
We helped the client with several different challenges, all of them striving towards the same goal of improving the Connect for Life platform. We achieved that by enhancing its accessibility, scalability and security.
New version, new possibilities
To meet the evolving needs of the Connect for Life project, we developed a new, enhanced version of the platform, leveraging the OpenMRS system. This new version offers expanded capabilities, including seamless integration with various telephony and messaging service providers, such as SMS and WhatsApp, ensuring flexible and reliable communication channels.
Implementations
We successfully deployed the system across multiple countries, including the Philippines, Brazil, and India, utilizing cloud infrastructure in the process.
By leveraging the cloud, we were able to create consistent and repeatable environments composed of EC2 instances and RDS databases. The deployment process was streamlined and automated using Terraform, which enabled us to rapidly create new production and development environments. This approach also facilitated easier management through the infrastructure-as-code paradigm, allowing for scalable and efficient operations across different regions.
Security
Given the medical nature of the Connect for Life system, security was our top priority. We employed a suite of AWS security services to safeguard the platform.
- AWS Inspector is used to continuously monitor and assess the infrastructure for vulnerabilities.
- AWS WAF (Web Application Firewall) provides robust filtering of incoming web traffic to protect against common web exploits.
- AWS GuardDuty offers continuous threat detection to identify potential security threats, including malware and unauthorized access attempts.
This comprehensive security strategy ensures that the platform remains secure and compliant with industry standards, protecting sensitive health data across all deployments.
Continuous support
SolDevelo continues to provide technical support for Connect for Life and is in charge of the upkeep of its cloud infrastructure. We’re also currently working on Connect for Life implementations: SHIP in Philippines and Leprosy trials in India/Brazil.
The Result
We’ve successfully deployed multiple Connect for Life implementations in the AWS Cloud environment, resulting in versatile integration options and a higher scalability. The deployment process has been streamlined, enabling easier and quicker adjustments to new environments, and automating some of the tasks.
With special care put into the security of the platform, Connect for Life serves as a safe, stable and efficient solution built and maintained to support healthcare professionals in their mission of helping their patients the best they can.
Technologies used
