Building a Scalable, HIPAA-Compliant Portal for a Dental Lab
Digital Dental Solutions partnered with LaunchPad Lab to quickly create a scalable, HIPAA-compliant portal with an elevated UX to keep the business running.
The Client
Digital Dental Solutions is a full-service dental lab based in Denver, CO. Digital Dental Solutions (DDS) creates autonomy and efficiency by offering dentists a bespoke digital workflow that helps them place orders for crowns and bridges, implant restorations, sleep appliances, and dental implant surgical guides—without losing any of the critical details.
The Challenge
Digital Dental Solutions came to LaunchPad Lab in search of a strategic partner to efficiently create a scalable, HIPAA-compliant portal with a streamlined user experience.
At the time, DDS was processing over 700 treatment plans and surgical guides each month with its original portal and relying on a Google Form to request and collect prescriptions and cases from their customers. This arduous process did not leave room for DDS to grow and expand and was causing them to lose customers. Coupled with a number of technical challenges, DDS leveraged LaunchPad Lab to rebuild a new, robust portal—or risk losing customers.
In addition, DDS offered more than 20 additional products that were not available through their portal—a significant opportunity for new business growth.
The Approach
For DDS, speed and reliability were two of the driving factors behind the new portal. To ensure that the DDS team had a fully-functional customer portal—and one that could eventually integrate seamlessly with Salesforce—the LaunchPad Lab team decided to leverage Heroku, a Platform as a Service (PaaS).
Technology
Heroku
Heroku, a game-changer in the development space, reduces the need for complicated hardware and foundational development in order to successfully launch web and mobile apps. By leveraging Heroku, we can dramatically reduce development time and spend, scale apps with ease and efficiency, and provide standard security practices.
SendGrid
SendGrid is the world’s largest cloud-based email delivery platform, designed to deliver transactional and marketing emails. By leveraging SendGrid, DDS can rely on the company’s cloud servers instead of setting up an email server.
DropZone
DropZone is an open-source library that makes it easy to preview images within a web or mobile app and easily store attachments.
App Features
Now, the DDS app includes an array of features, including:
Authentication and Roles
Specifically designed for admins, technicians, and doctors, each role can log in separately to use the portal. For each specific user and their needs, different functionality becomes available.
Mobile-Friendy & Responsive
Because many technicians and doctors don’t spend their entire day at a desk, the DDS portal is mobile-friendly and responsive—so all users have a seamless experience whether they’re on their phones or on their computers.
Case Management
With the portal’s functionality, doctors can effortlessly create cases based on pre-set case categories and types. Then, they can add attachments for the dental imaging, making it easy for DDS to obtain the images needed for the case.
Throughout the entire lifecycle of a case, doctors and technicians can add comments to communicate with one another and keep an easy-to-follow communication channel.
Doctor and Patient Management
To streamline the process of adding users, admins and technicians can add new doctors to the portal by creating a profile for them and sending an email invite. Doctors can also easily add their patients to the portal so they can track their case progress.
Email Notifications
To ensure that no one misses an update, emails are sent from the portal to alert users about invites, new case alerts, status updates, or new comments. To aid in the amount of information received on a daily basis, users can adjust their notification frequency settings through their profiles.
The Results
By building the app on Heroku, DDS’s portal is now streamlined, efficient, and user-friendly. Dentists can easily submit requests to the portal. Technicians at DDS can accurately open a case, read through the notes, and understand the ask within minutes.
DDS is now processing nearly 600 treatment plans per month with precise accuracy. This has prompted feedback from their users, saying “I enjoy the lab script page and where to upload the zip file. I feel like all necessary information is requested when filling out this form. I like that there is a free text box on the lab script area and I can complete the form on the go with my mobile device.”
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