During my search for a reliable product development partner, Panenco truly listened to my story and quickly grasped the mission of QIT. Together we embarked on a rewarding journey in which we combined clinical experience, scientific insights and state-of-the-art cloud engineering.
Turning QIT from a research project into a market leader in the mental health sector
We were approached in 2017 by Nele Stinckens (PhD) who is a researcher, guest professor and managing director of a psychotherapy group practice. She asked us to translate years of validated research into a digital product tailored to the mental health sector. In this case study we highlight the journey of QIT and Panenco’s role in bringing this product from an idea towards a market-leading product.
Challenge
Mental healthcare requires very different technological instruments compared to traditional healthcare. We set out on a journey to build an integrated solution for psychotherapists to manage patient records and build digital treatment pathways.
Solution
We conceptualised and built the entire product from end-to-end: from the user experience for psychotherapists and their patients, towards the cloud architecture and the software development operations. In parallel we were a driving force in the go-to-market.
Approach
We started out with deep market research to identify functional common denominators across 100s of prospects. Once this became clear, we mapped out user flows, defined the application architecture and brought a dedicated product team together to build a high-quality product.
Defining the functional and architectural specifications to digitalise mental healthcare
Mental healthcare is a unique niche in the broader healthcare system. In traditional healthcare a doctor determines a diagnosis and then implements a treatment plan. Mental healthcare is more subtle, where the relationship between the care provider and the patient is at the center. After fully grasping this industry and its subtleties, we formalised a game plan to build a digital offering for psychotherapists and psychiatrists to store their patient records online and build digital treatment pathways.
Strategy track:
With the help of a product vision board, we mapped out all strategic dimensions to make sure we'd be solving the right problem for this industry.
Design track:
We brought all instruments from our playbook to the table to map out the functional requirements through visual prototyping and early user validation.
Architectural track:
On the technical front we created a cloud architecture leveraging Google Cloud Platform, keeping security and scalability requirements in mind.
Organising a highly effective product development process
We set up a sprint-based operating model with agile routines. We structured the product development process with clear milestones, bi-weekly planning sessions, well-documented user stories and close involvement of the leadership team.
We brought a blended product team together with a clear mandate to build and release quickly while safeguarding product quality through extensive automated tests, monitoring tools, stress tests and other instruments in the deployment pipelines.
Giving the platform the operational foundations to grow
We officially brought QIT online to market in early 2019 and saw rapid growth ever since. While we're continuously releasing new features, we're setting up operational and technical foundations to be ready to truly scale: setting up a customer success model, assisting with legal and regulatory aspects, automating billing procedures and more. The mental health sector is in good hands!
Founder QIT online
Nele approached us with a truly ambitious plan to innovate in the mental health industry. We didn’t hesitate for a second to start building QIT together, given its strong scientific basis and clear market opportunity.
We turned this into a structural partnership in 2019 and we will gladly keep supporting QIT as it grows up to its full potential!
Are you looking for an entrepreneurial digital partner? Reach out to hello@panenco.com or schedule a call