Aava

Aava is a family-run medical center with over 50 years of experience in bettering Finnish health. In January 2022, they partnered with Reaktor to build out a fully digital health service that would enable Aava to serve their customers faster and more efficiently than ever before. 

Four months later, an end-to-end medical service app, including a custom built chat feature and a symptoms motor for pre-diagnosing patients, was released. Aava’s agile ways of working coupled with Reaktor’s deep know-how in building digital health apps allowed the project to go from inception to reality in record time. 

Fast forward to today, Aava’s doctors are now able to serve up to 15 patients per hour, compared with the historical 15 minute slots that limited cases to four per hour. The app now serves tens of thousands of customers, having racked up 15,000 users in just the first three months since launch. 

Digitizing health services is increasingly becoming a crucial element for health companies operating in a more and more competitive market. Digital apps not only provide a better service for existing customers, but also open opportunities for acquiring more diverse business. 

This was the case and motivation for Aava, and what they went on to achieve. The digitization unlocked benefits in other areas as well, such as in attracting talent and making internal operations more efficient. For example, Aava is now able to offer more flexibility to doctors too, with the possibility of splitting time in-office and attending to patients remotely. 

Work in the health sector is meaningful, and often life-changing, business. In Aava’s case, building this technology allowed them to expand the number of patients each doctor was able to see by manyfold. Rather than being constrained to the conventional 15 minute slots, doctors are now able to serve up to 15 customers per hour – making getting medical assistance significantly faster for all Aava customers. 

As Aava did not have any pre-existing digital medical functionalities on mobile platforms, designing the service was nearly a blank slate (hinging on a few existing system dependencies). Reaktor deployed three designers, and the project kicked off with a four week design sprint. Developers came on after a few weeks, with Aava bringing on three devs and Reaktor two. 

The designers and engineers worked hand-in-hand – when devs started working on a new feature, designers jumped on to go through the initial concept designs and iterate as the devs were building them. The agile collaboration enabled the teams to move exceptionally quickly, tackling even more complex challenges such as building out the decision tree that would function as the symptoms motor pre-diagnosing patients.

Aava had a clear idea of what they wanted to build when partnering with Reaktor. With previous experience in digitizing health services from within the team, Aava knew what they wanted to achieve and what was to be avoided. 

Every project at Reaktor is different, as naturally every client and their needs are unique. Aava wanted to move fast and ship quickly, but without compromising on quality and keeping their eye on what makes sense for the future as well. This was made possible by combining Reaktor’s deep design and tech expertise together with both companies’ agile ways of working. Aava’s dev team brought with them an insatiable curiosity for learning new technologies that made team integration and knowledge transfer feel effortless.

The end result was a power team that brought an idea to launch in just four months. And that has now resulted in Aava serving up to 15 customers per hour compared to the conventional 15 minute slots as well as more flexibility for the doctors and lower friction for seeking medical assistance for patients.

The biggest challenge in the project was the chat feature. The question was whether to use a third party application, or to start from scratch and build it custom. After an exhaustive evaluation from both the design and development perspective, the team decided that a 3rd party solution wouldn’t be robust enough. The chat would require a substantial set of custom paths, so it was important to have control over how it was built. 

Aava’s chat feature allows patients to access medical assistance in the same way a person would handle a lot of human communication these days: through a chat application. From pre-diagnosis to speaking with a doctor or getting your prescription filled, the feature takes care of the patient with care, efficiency, and diligence.

• End to end design
• Product management for alignment and nailing sprints
• Front and backend development, building a native app
• Design and development of a custom chat feature
• Using Amazon Web Services (AWS) to scale