Challenge: Good Doctor needed to improve communication efficiency between doctors and patients while reducing queue times and enhancing usability.
Strategy: They integrated Stream's scalable chat infrastructure for Android and iOS, supported by comprehensive documentation and live engineering assistance.
Result: Stream enabled faster doctor responses, reduced queue times, and significantly improved the overall user experience for both doctors and patients.
About Good Doctor
Good Doctor is Indonesia's leading B2B health tech platform, connecting families with high-quality healthcare providers nationwide. Through its exclusive partnership with Grab Health, Good Doctor ensures rapid home delivery of medical services and prescriptions to patients, often within 15 to 30 minutes. Focused on providing accessible healthcare solutions to corporate-insured clients and individual users alike, Good Doctor is at the forefront of digital healthcare, leveraging advanced technology to deliver convenient and efficient medical consultations.
The Challenge
Good Doctor faced the challenge of optimizing doctor-patient communication in a fast-paced, often resource-constrained environment. As Muhammad Husein, Senior Vice President of Technology at Good Doctor, says, "Communication is our (Good Doctor's) core service because we're connecting doctors with patients."
The platform's previous chat solution was inefficient and lacked the performance and scalability needed for their B2B-driven model, where multiple patients may need simultaneous attention. Additionally, its technical limitations, such as poor network performance and lack of flexibility, lead to prolonged queue times and dissatisfaction among doctors and patients.
The Solution
Good Doctor turned to Stream, a leader in chat and communication infrastructure, to integrate a more robust chat platform. With prior experience in other tech companies, Husein already knew the drawbacks of many chat solutions available in the market. He highlights the deciding factors for choosing Stream, "Based on the documentation, it answered many problems that I faced before... it was quite appealing and the main reason why we have Stream in the platform right now."
Stream's global edge network also played a critical role in Husein's decision. It delivers real-time communication with low latency, ensuring fast and reliable message delivery regardless of geographic location. By leveraging strategically distributed data centers globally, Stream minimizes network delays, providing a seamless user experience for doctors and patients, even in regions with fluctuating network conditions. This infrastructure is vital for telehealth platforms like Good Doctor, where timely communication is essential for accurate diagnoses and effective patient care.
Implementation
The integration process was seamless, supported by Stream's comprehensive chat documentation and engineering support.
"One of the best things about Stream is the documentation is quite comprehensive... Stream is very supportive. They do live code reviews by real engineers, not just support staff."
Good Doctor's engineering team received tailored assistance, including live code reviews from Stream's top engineers. This level of collaboration ensured that complex integration challenges were quickly resolved, allowing for a smooth migration from their previous solution.
Good Doctor leverages the Android and iOS SDKs for mobile apps, ensuring a smooth and consistent user experience on smartphones, where many patients and doctors access the service. Additionally, it utilizes the Javascript SDK for its web-based platform, allowing for a responsive and feature-rich interface that can be accessed from PCs and laptops.
Features and Benefits
Good Doctor leverages several core features from Stream, including push notifications, read receipts, and rich media sharing.Â
- Notifications: Real-time notifications ensure doctors and patients stay informed of new messages or updates. This is especially crucial in telehealth, where timely interactions can impact diagnosis and treatment outcomes.
- Read Receipts: The ability to track when messages are read enhances transparency and accountability in doctor-patient interactions. Doctors can be assured that patients have seen critical health instructions, while patients know their concerns are being actively addressed, improving trust and engagement.
- Rich Media Sharing: Patients can easily communicate symptoms visually by sharing images, lab results, or other rich media, which helps doctors make more accurate diagnoses remotely. This feature streamlines the consultation process, reducing back-and-forth clarifications and improving overall efficiency.
According to Husein, the flexibility of Stream's components, especially for mobile, helped their team speed up the UI development process.
"We are using everything — notifications, core chat, read/unread messages, several UI components -- and it helped us build the UI quickly."
Doctors have responded positively, with feedback indicating improved usability and efficiency. The implementation of Stream reduced the queue time significantly, enabling doctors to respond to patients faster and manage multiple consultations simultaneously.
"The queue time is shorter now. Doctors can easily respond quickly to the patient's queries and diagnose faster."
Results
Stream Chat has empowered Good Doctor to:
- Enhance Communication Efficiency: Doctors now provide quicker and more effective consultations using real-time chat, reducing response times and improving patient outcomes.
- Improve User Experience: Both doctors and patients reported noticeable improvements in their interaction experiences compared to previous solutions.
- Scale Its Growth: With Stream's flexible and scalable chat infrastructure, Good Doctor is poised to integrate additional real-time communication features, such as video consultations, which are currently being explored.
Husein summarizes his experience with Stream by recommending it to other companies looking for a seamless chat solution.
"I think it's easy. It's an easy choice. I think Stream is the best choice that you have if you want to build a chat platform without the hassle. It's not an advertising. It's my own experience. I think it's the best option that you have right now in the market."
Good Doctor's partnership with Stream exemplifies the potential of telehealth when paired with cutting-edge communication infrastructure. It delivers a faster, more reliable, and highly scalable solution for the future of healthcare in Indonesia.