Nexus Disease Management Platform

Leveraging software to bring standards and scalability to disease management.

  • Discovery
  • Print
  • Design & Usability
  • Copywriting
  • Photography & Illustration
  • User Interface
  • Agile Development

Encore Healthcare is a Tennessee based health management company focused on population health and complex care solutions for post acute care providers. In their many combined years working in disease management, the clinicians have developed protocols and algorithms to successfully manage risk among respiratory patients. Our challenge was to develop a digital product around those methods that improved efficiency, speed, and scalability.

The result is NEXUS, a disease management platform which enables next-generation high-touch respiratory management at home. By The Way Labs was involved in all stages of product development, from initial discovery to the development of documentation and sales materials.

Discovery and Usability

Using a competency-based learning approach, we developed a plan of care dashboard which uses badges to clearly show a patient’s real-time progress within the program. The intuitive interface allows quick navigation throughout the program elements. The web app is optimized for use in tablets, but the responsive design also performs well in desktop and mobile devices. For rapid development, we relied on Sketch and Invision to develop fully functional mocks. Stakeholders were able to provide feedback to the demo at each stage of design, allowing for quick, iterative product development.
Nexus Disease Management Platform, dashboard on tablet
Nexus Plan of Care dashboard, Goal progress, and Goal detail screens (l-r)

Responsive Angular WebApp on headless Drupal CMS

NEXUS is a data driven web-application written in javascript using the AngularJS platform.

The data is provided by, and stored in, a custom Drupal back-end application with a RESTFul api. Dual-authentication allows users to simultaneously log-in to Nexus (via Drupal) and other integrated systems.

The whole project uses a custom IT architecture developed using AWS tools for HIPPA compliant heath data security. Most every tool in the AWS toolbox was required to make this complex project work, including EC2 instances and load balancers, RDS databases, Route53 traffic policies, API gateway instances, S3 web containers, and others all hosted within a Virtual Private Cloud to prevent intrusions. 

UI prototype screens for Nexus Disease Management Platform
A comprehensive UI prototype facilitated stakeholder buy-in

Interactive Voice Response

IVARSSON is a Twilio-driven interactive voice response (IVR) platform developed using the Amazon Web Services suite of tools (Lambda, API Gateway, and Dynamo DB). Client applications can create, store, and execute IVR calls to any phone via an api. They can then subscribe to receive the collected data by providing a callback url. Therapists may use NEXUS to deliver assessments in person, or leverage IVARSSON to schedule phone-delivered assessments.

Knowledge-base and Collateral

By The Way Labs integrated the NEXUS platform with Desk.com for documentation and support. We organized and formatted over 100 clinical articles into the knowledge-base and authored technical and user documentation to support the software. We produced print versions of select documentation including a patient workbook, a therapist user guide, and sales materials.
Nexus Home printed patient workbook
Nexus Home printed patient workbook
Custom-themed Nexus Knowledge-base on Desk.com
Custom-themed Nexus Knowledge-base on Desk.com
Trifold Sales Brochure for Nexus Home
Trifold Sales Brochure for Nexus Home