CALMERRY – ONLINE THERAPY PLATFORM

Story

Mental health is not something you can see or measure. However, our mental health affects all aspects of our lives: work, friends and family members.

When faced with a problem, most people prefer to stay silent instead of asking for help or seeking professional advice. And there are many reasons for such behavior.

Some people think that no one cares about their problems. Some are unable to visit therapists because in-person therapy offices are located too far from their homes or workplaces.

COVID-19 only adds fuel to the fire and gives more reason to worry. People are worried about losing their jobs and getting infected in crowded places.

The privately held tech entrepreneur, whose name we cannot reveal due to a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA), saw an opportunity in this situation. He saw psychiatric help services trying to meet the growing demand and realized there was a business opportunity and a good cause at the time, so he founded the company in this space and hired our team to create Calmerry – an online therapy platform.

Customer’s request

For the Calmerry project, the customer has the following requirements:

• The project should include three different interfaces — a patient account, a therapist account, and a CRM account
• The project must meet US regulations (GDPR) for healthcare software regarding the storage and use of sensitive patient data
• Patients will receive online therapy through secure online chat and secured video sessions, only from licensed counselors in the United States
• The first version of the project should include a basic feature set, but the feature scope will expand in the future

Project goals and objectives 

Our main goal for the Calmerry project is to develop a secure platform that brings together patients and licensed clinical psychologists through chat rooms and online consultations. We want the online therapy platform to be equally useful for both patients and therapists, providing them with a safe therapeutic space.

our challenge 

During project development, we encountered the following challenges:

Monetization model  . We need to propose a monetization model that can be applied to this project.

To do this, we conducted market research and collected several monetization strategies, most commonly applied in such projects.

• Next, we matched the business models with the client’s business needs and decided that a monthly subscription business model was the perfect match for this project.
• We’ve also developed different subscription types — basic with live chat and advanced with video calls.

Confirm therapy  . Under US law, therapists are only allowed to provide therapy to patients from the same state. We also only want experienced family therapists to join the online therapy platform.

We addressed these challenges by integrating a tailored algorithm and an initial survey, mandatory for both patients and therapists.

• During the survey, users select their status from a drop-down menu
• The matching algorithm connects patients and therapists from one location
• We integrated the required “License Number” submitted into the survey for therapists to validate their experience.

GDPR compliance  . Since an e-therapy platform falls under the category of medical software, it must comply with the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation).

These regulations relate to the processing and storage of sensitive personal data. The same regulations apply to data exchanged by text and live video chat.

The project challenged us to provide secure connections and data encryption. Since creating video conferencing software from scratch was not within the client’s budget, we also needed to find a third-party video conferencing service provider that was GDPR compliant.

We ensure GDPR compliance by:

• Uses SSL secure connection protocol to encrypt text messages, user data is used by the appropriate algorithm, and user data is stored in the database
• Uses on-premise servers in the US to store encrypted user data
• Leverage secure MongoDB clusters as data storage to protect user accounts, passwords, and encryption keys
• Use the Daily.co frontend javascript library to embed and control video calls
• Integrate the Pusher service to send push notifications to users that do not send sensitive user data

architecture  . We needed to choose the architecture for this project carefully for many reasons.

Video conferencing functionality requires heavy load on the server, which can affect the overall performance of the online therapy platform.

The customer plans to launch the project in all US states, so the architecture will handle hundreds of simultaneous actions performed by thousands of users.

There are many interactive functions to add to the second version of the project.

We considered all these factors and decided that a microservices architecture was the best fit for this project. Overall, architecture includes:

• Backend server API, powered by Node.js
• Micro frontend applications developed with Angular call the backend API server through secure encryption
• Store data created from MongoDB clusters securely

Callmerry: Convenient mental health platform for every user

We have included the following functionalities in the first version of the project:

For patients

Input survey  . Users must answer a 3-minute survey for the platform to receive a person’s age, gender, family status, location, previous and current mental health conditions (eating disorders drinking, anger control, emotional abuse) and mental problems are currently bothering users.

Appropriate flow  . Within 24 hours, the platform connects patients with therapists based on their expertise and status. If the patient is not satisfied with the therapist, the platform will recommend another therapist for free.

Text messages  . Registered users can communicate with their therapists via online chat from anywhere.

TV affair  . Patients can purchase additional video chat functionality for consultation during on-demand video consultations.

Register  . Users choose the subscription plan that suits their needs – to communicate with the therapist via text message or add video conferencing functionality. Users can also cancel their subscription at any time and get a refund if they are not satisfied with the services provided.

Treatment space. Therapists can set patient goals and track progress in real time within the therapy space.

Therapy management  . Patients can pause unfinished sessions or pause their account for the desired amount of time.

For consultants

license  . Therapists provide a short survey to provide information about their location, the state in which they are licensed, and the highest number of clinical licenses in their state allowing independent clinical practice .

Text and video chat  . Therapists reach out to patients in need through online chat and video sessions during work days.

Load management  . Therapists can set their caseload and provide therapy to as many clients as they like.

Specifications

• Angle for front
• Node.js for backend
• Ionic to develop a hybrid mobile application
• MongoDB for secured databases
• Redis for session queues
• Kafka for exchanging messages between microservices
• S3 team to develop messaging feature from scratch
• Pusher to send push notifications without sensitive data
• Daily.co for secured video calls

Team composition 

• 3 Front end developers
• 2 Backend programmers
• 1 technology director
• 1 Business Analyst
• 1 Project management
• 1 Product Manager
• 1 QA engineer

Result 

We have delivered a GDPR compliant e-therapy platform with essential functionality. You can see the project website on the link.

After delivering the first version of the Calmerry online therapy platform, we started creating the next project version. Currently, we’re improving the user experience for patients and therapists, integrating therapist notes into video chat and scheduling sessions via calendar. We are also considering allowing file exchange via messenger between users.