Case study: Care Care für Reizdarm

Cara Care für Reizdarm is a digital health application (in German: Digitale Gesundheitsanwendungen) which supports people suffering from chronic gastrointestinal issues. It is developed by the Berlin-based startup HiDoc Technologies GmbH and is officially approved by BfArM, the Federal Institute for Drugs and Medical Devices. The application runs on both Android and iOS; however, one needs a prescription by a doctor in order to use it.

Patients using Cara Care für Reizdarm are able to get in touch with the Care Team via chat — and this chat is powered by Kabelwerk. The main business requirements which make Kabelwerk a good choice are:

  1. Security. Cara Care für Reizdarm is a digital health application and as such it processes sensitive medical and personal data. Handling this data in a secure manner is of utmost importance to Cara Care — as well as to Kabelwerk, resulting in a clear alignment of priorities with regards to data security.
  2. Reliability. Patients should not only be able to reach the Care Team around the clock, but they should also be able to reach out in case of problems, including technical ones. In other words, the chat should be a robust self-sufficient component which is likely to continue functioning even in the case of other components of the application breaking down.
  3. Integration. On both patient and Care Team sides the chat is integrated using Kabelwerk's JavaScript SDK. On the patient side, this allows for full control over the chat's front-end and consistent UX for app users. On the other side, the chat is integrated into the already existing internal tools — which includes not only the Cara Care Dashboard where Care Team members chat with patients, but also a custom home-grown CRM tool and a self-hosted BI tool.

Kabelwerk as seen by the Patients

Patients using Cara Care für Reizdarm can access the chat ether via the Toolkit menu or by clicking a new message notification.

Video of a user opening the chat via the Toolkit menu, then going back, then receiving a notification.

Once on the chat screen, patients can exchange messages with the Care Team in real time.

Video of a user exchanging messages with a Care Team member.

Kabelwerk as seen by the Care Team

The Care Team chats with patients using the Cara Care Dashboard — an internal tool which predates the Kabelwerk integration and which serves other purposes as well.

The Cara Care Dashboard categorises conversations with patients into inboxes. An inbox can be understood as a filter which can be based on patient attributes and/or conversation status; for example, there is an inbox which contains conversations with patients using the app with a doctor's prescription, and other inboxes which contain converstaions with study participants.

For better organisation of their work, Care Team members can archive (close) a conversation after having replied to the patient's inquiry. An archived conversation will stay in the dedicated "All closed" inbox until the patient writes again — at which point the conversation moves back to its original inbox.

Care Team members can also assign a conversation to themselves or to another Care Team member. An assigned conversation gets clearly marked as such, signalling to other team members that it is already being taken care of.

Technical Implementation

In both the Cara Care für Reizdarm application and the Cara Care Dashboard the Kabelwerk chat is integrated using Kabelwerk's JavaScript SDK. The SDK takes care of maintaining an open websocket connection to the Kabelwerk backend, emitting events (e.g. when a new message is posted), and keeping state. The design and component implementation are taken care of on HiDoc's side.