iTriage

by Patrick Leonard

The video features Patrick Leonard from iTriage, a healthcare technology company based in Denver, discussing the importance of using technology to empower consumers in managing their healthcare. The primary goal of iTriage is to address major healthcare challenges in the U.S., where healthcare costs account for a significant portion of the GDP. Leonard highlights the need for improved healthcare access through mobile technology, explaining the functionalities of the iTriage app.

Key Points Discussed:
- Company Background: iTriage was founded five years ago, aiming to help consumers take control of their healthcare.
- Market Reach: The app has over 10 million downloads globally and is actively used by 3 million users monthly to manage healthcare needs.
- Mobile Healthcare Management: Leonard emphasizes how mobile devices can do more than just make calls. iTriage allows users to input symptoms and access a machine learning-based symptom checker, offering follow-up questions similar to those posed by a doctor.
- Level of Care Guidance: The app helps users find the appropriate level of care for their symptoms, recommending against unnecessary ER visits, and promotes cost-effective healthcare navigation.
- Data Management: iTriage provides secure cloud storage for syncing medical data across devices, streamlining the management process.
- Technological Architecture: Leonard describes the transition from a single app to a service-oriented architecture with multiple Rails applications to support growth and scalability.
- Continuous Learning: Leonard highlights the significance of learning from mistakes made during development and growth, welcoming conference attendees to ask questions and share insights.

In conclusion, the discussion underscores the potential of technology to transform healthcare, facilitate consumer empowerment, and address systemic problems in the industry. Leonard's closing remarks invite further engagement from the audience, emphasizing ongoing development in the Rails environment and the importance of developer collaboration in their journey.

00:00:19.119 My name is Patrick Leonard, and I think this is too close. I head up the technology group at iTriage. How many people have heard of iTriage? Okay, is it because you saw our way in? Well, good! iTriage is a local company. We were founded and are based in downtown Denver. We were founded five years ago, and the reason we started the company is to help people take control of their healthcare.

00:00:34.149 Healthcare is something you probably don't think about a lot. You hear about it in the news—healthcare reform, the political battles, and all that kind of stuff—but it's actually a huge problem for all of us. The fact that our healthcare industry is a mess is the reason it's costing 16% of our GDP, which is on the way to 20%. It's a big piece of our national debt, and we really believe that it’s a generational challenge that we must take up and fix. So, we set out to use technology to put control back in the hands of consumers, all of us, to take charge of our healthcare.

00:01:21.320 That's why we started the company, and we've made really great progress. We just celebrated our 10 millionth download; iTriage has been downloaded over 10 million times around the world. Thank you! It’s used by 3 million people every month. We have a lot of people using the app to manage their healthcare. So, what does it mean to manage your healthcare?

00:01:44.509 Think about what you can do with your mobile devices now. If you haven't downloaded iTriage, take your phone out of your pocket. Think about what you can do and what you do every day—you don’t even think about it. You message your friends, you can download music, or book a flight. You can connect to people you haven’t talked to in years.

00:02:03.049 Now think about what you can do with healthcare on your phone or your iPad. It’s kind of pathetic that you can really only make a phone call. That’s what you do; you call a doctor. We’re trying to change that. With iTriage, you can say, "My stomach hurts," and go into the app, where we have a machine learning-based symptom checker that knows how to ask you follow-up questions like a doctor would.

00:02:24.439 It also takes into account your age and gender to help guide you to the right level of care. This way, when you need to get taken care of, it doesn’t cost you your whole fortune. It helps you get to the right level of care—don’t go to the ER for everything. We also provide secure cloud storage that syncs your data securely across your devices, giving you everything you need to manage your healthcare.

00:03:05.750 Building an app that does everything I described is a lot of work, and most of it happens on the server side in Rails. We built iTriage originally as a Rails app five years ago. About two years ago, as our company was really growing, I realized we were outgrowing the single app we had. It wasn’t going to scale as we started hiring more people. When you get enough people in a codebase, everything just slows down.

00:03:41.780 So, we re-architected the product as a service-oriented architecture driven by RESTful APIs. We now have over 20 Rails apps running in production as the backend for iTriage. It's been really interesting and a lot of work. There’s a lot we had to figure out along the way, but to get a big Rails app going, the solution we came up with was to have lots of little Rails apps. That’s the direction we went, and it’s been really successful.

00:04:21.099 I want to give you an overview of our experiences as a longtime Rails shop and a local Rails shop. We have 17 people here from our development group, and this is our third year sponsoring this conference. I'm really thrilled to be here. If you have any questions or anything you’re curious about—things we've learned along the way—we’ve made lots of mistakes and learned a great deal.

00:04:51.500 If you have any questions, feel free to grab me. I'll be here for a couple more hours or anyone who's around with an iTriage shirt or at our front desk. We’d be thrilled to talk to you. That was kind of a cursory overview, but I hope it was interesting. I would love to talk to you all more. Have a great conference! Thank you.