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Web Applications / Integrations & APIs

Helping a pharmacy team modernize an outdated tool

Clinicians use this system to ask the pharmacy's drug-information team about medications and interactions. We took over a decade-old app and rebuilt it on modern Symfony on top of the same database, so no data had to move.

Working with the team
Since 2020

Overview

Clinicians ask, pharmacists research, everyone learns.

When a doctor or colleague has a question about a drug or an interaction, they submit it through the portal. The drug-information team triages each request and assigns a researcher. The researcher starts from the team's existing research, then does new research where it's needed, so the clinician gets a well-grounded answer.

Every answer is kept, so the library of past consults grows with each question.

The Challenge

A decade-old app with years of data in it.

The application was written by another vendor who had stepped away from the project. We took over maintenance, but the code was more than ten years old, on a framework long past support, and needed more work and security fixes than it was worth patching.

Years of consults, responses and references lived in its database. Replacing the app couldn't mean losing or re-entering any of that.

Our Solution

A new application on the existing database.

We used the old app as the specification and built a new one on Symfony 6.4, pointed at the same SQL Server database. No major data migration was needed: we added what the new features required and cleaned up data in place, such as de-duplicated lookup values and merged duplicate requester records.

Sign-in goes through the institution's directory, so there are no passwords to manage, only access and roles for requesters, researchers and administrators. We kept the behaviors staff relied on, including older consults with incomplete records, and improved search so one query matches across fields. Static analysis runs at its strictest level.

The Results

Same data, a much better tool.

The team moved to the new system with every past consult in place. It is better laid out and easier to use, pages load faster, and staff find the information they're looking for more quickly.

The security debt is gone, password management is gone with it, and the code is on a current, supported framework the institution can keep up to date.

Screenshots

A requester's list of consults, each with its date, the question asked and a status such as In progress, Published or Paused.A finished consult as the requester sees it: the request, a summary of the answer and a strength-of-evidence rating of Moderate.A researcher's view of an open consult: who received, researched and requested it, notes, total time spent, and tabs for requester data, request details, search strategy, response and consult data.

Technology used

  • Symfony 6.4
  • PHP 8
  • SQL Server
  • Doctrine
  • LDAP

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