Dementia
The web application is intended for a private dental clinic, and includes two user roles – one for clinical staff to do training and one for an administrator to manage the courses.
Project Overview
Dementia is an e-learning toolkit for dental care professionals and support staff to identify a patient’s predisposition to dementia at an early stage. By exploiting the solution, doctors get to know disease signs and symptoms much faster.
The web application is intended for a private dental clinic, and includes two user roles – one for clinical staff to do training and one for an administrator to manage the courses.
Story Behind
Our client is an intermediary for large private healthcare institutions, who helps them introduce innovative solutions into a workflow. He had a brilliant idea for facilities that provide dental services and are interested in staff development; the proposal was to launch online training courses to upskill dentists in dementia treatment.
The thing is, poor oral health causes discomfort and reduces blood flow to the brain, which, in turn, can lead to an exacerbation of the symptoms of dementia. Based on risk factors, signs and symptoms, the client brought together tests and a general assessment scale for doctors. Once the learning course was structured and frameworks were well-thought through, he asked us to develop a solution from scratch.
Challenges
While focusing on creating training materials for doctors, the administrative user role should be able to edit course content by dynamically adding images, tables and links. In turn, clinical staff toned to be able to master and assimilate a specific set of knowledge through an intuitive interface. Our aim was to select an appropriate framework, in the view of required interactions, for both profiles.
Despite a thought-out app logic and a precise list of recommendations with guidance for necessary functionality, the layouts were quite sketchy. So, we needed to think over the mark-up in detail, following UX principles, and enrich it with a relevant colour scheme on the spot.
Also, the client wanted a functional, responsive cross-platform solution that could seamlessly operate across all devices and multiple browsers for the sake of user convenience.
Interface
for the Clinical Staff
In line with the provided templates and feature list, we implemented a user profile with an assessment table and 3 levels of learning modules. To develop the client-side of the web app, our team used Angular framework.
Even though the client clearly understood how the application was going work in general, it was quite difficult for him to consider all the small details. For example, to proceed with the next learning module, the user must familiarise themselves with all the materials in the current one.
So, we suggested the implementation of an algorithm - as soon as the user opens all drop-down lists, the system skips them to the next level. If a test is incomplete, the system blocks further steps. Thus, we managed to ensure a transparent assessment system and prevent abuse.
Administration Panel
As per client's requests to manage content directly from the admin panel, it was crucial to choose the suitable editor. We settled on the Kendo UI Editor, due to its rich cross-browser and mobile support, high-performance and responsiveness. It allows users to edit HTML in a user-friendly way, including basic text formatting, image loading and hyperlinks formatting features.
Taking into account that the client constantly put forward new requirements and there was no layout for the admin dashboard, we were forced to place elements on the spot. By following UI kits, we managed to design the admin module with a performance chart precisely in line with the client’s idea.
Cross-Platform Development
To provide the cross-platform web application, the development team decided to use to ASP.NET Core 2.2 framework for the server-side, as it is easily compatible with macOS, Linux and Windows systems, as well as supporting multiple data formats. Furthermore, ASP.NET Core 2.2 easily integrates with common client platforms that facilitated and sped up the development process.
Progressive
Enhancements
In view of layout responsiveness necessity across all devices and browsers, our developers created a basic web-interface with all the relevant functionality, then improved it gradually, from one development level to another.
Under this approach, we managed to avoid breakdowns and crashes on outdated browsers like Internet Explorer, which saved the client time and resources.
Technologies
Scope of Work
Result
We are proud to be a driving force of this socially important project by promoting patients’ self-care and facilitating professional medical practice in healthcare facilities. Although the system was originally designed for private access and the number of users is limited so far, 36 dentists have already successfully completed the training and received certificates.
Meanwhile, the concept embodiment resonated with the management of other dental clinics - more and more dental practitioners will be able to advise patients on the threats of dementia expertly.
