HelpMed is a web application designed by the Vilmate team to help doctors and other healthcare professionals to get to work during the difficult time of quarantine. Via this app, volunteer drivers can find passengers who need a ride nearby and transport them to hospitals in drivers’ personal vehicles. In turn, medical workers can thereby have their transportation needs addressed. In particular, by using the applications, they get access to reliable transportation, enabling them to come to their workplaces in a setting of limited public transit ridership.
The quarantine measures that have been announced in an effort to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus have also affected the public transit system across the country. This change has, in the first place, introduced difficulties for people who work in an essential service, such as healthcare professionals. At the beginning of the pandemic crisis, various Telegram groups and channels were formed to help those who need a ride to find drivers. However, it soon got hard to navigate through them. Therefore, we decided to design an alternative solution that would provide a better user experience. This solution had to allow healthcare professionals to quickly find the volunteers willing to help doctors and nurses: contribute their time and provide transportation, picking up passengers at a specific address and dropping them off at their destination.
The journey from idea inception through to execution took no more than a week. Once the product vision was finalized, Vilmate got in touch with Kharkiv City Council members to discuss the project. We engaged in meaningful dialogue with the Council and managed to ensure that the project was to bring huge benefits to the city.
To meet the objective outlined, Vilmate has put together a team of 10 people: 1 Android, 1 iOS, 2 front-end and 2 back-end developers, 1 DevOps engineer, 1 Q&A engineer, 1 UI/UX designer, and 1 project manager. Throughout their involvement with the HelpMed development, they have been doing overtime as by day, they continued working on their projects. The first release of HelpMed was available for users already four days after we started. It offered limited functionality, which then was the same for drivers and passengers. The Vilmate team kept making improvements to the application, while marketing specialists started running a promotional campaign with the City Council’s support.
The implementation of HelpMed allowed users to take advantage of the application’s features to:
When developing HelpMed, our aim was to get a functional product fast, so we have chosen the following technology stack:
Ionic for front-end
Python & Django for back-end
WebView for loading webpages in iOS and Android apps
The Vilmate team delivered a fully functional web application with future scaling potential within one week. Vilmate was responsible for defining the project scope and specifications. We have put the right people, systems, and processes together, which allowed for truly end-to-end development. We also chose the best timing to launch HelpMed as the groundwork for it was already laid by then. As a result, the application had 1000+ users and 150+ completed rides in the first week.
Currently, the HelpMed app can be downloaded from the iTunes App Store or Google Play store. The service is only available in Ukraine and is completely free.
