Miotec develops healthcare software, biomedical, and virtual reality equipment. In the market for twenty years, the company was founded to help professionals who deal with human development and find it difficult to measure information and make decisions.
Its main healthcare software is an electromyography sensor that quantifies information from muscle data. The sensor captures the electrical activity of the muscles, both contraction and relaxation, and presents such data to the health professional.
To boost innovation to its product, in 2019, Miotec joined forces with SoftDesign to create Mioflux, a piece of equipment connected to the electromyography sensor capable of measuring urinary volume and flow. The goal is to support pelvic physiotherapists in the treatment of children with urinary difficulties, people in the postoperative period, and adults with voiding disorders.
We spoke with Fabiano Ergoni, CEO & Founder of Miotec, to learn more about the challenges and achievements of this project. Watch the video below and learn about the history of Mioflux. Don’t forget to turn on the subtitles.
Why work with SoftDesign?
Miotec had an achilles heel: talent retention. The company set up internal hardware and healthcare software teams to develop its equipment. However, after a few months, the professionals ended up leaving the company and taking their knowledge about the products away.
Fabiano Ergoni, CEO and Founder of Miotec, understood that this problem should not be his and that, as an entrepreneur, he needed to dedicate himself to business objectives and to the launch of new products. When talking to SoftDesign, he felt safe with the company’s transparency:
“Osmar (A. M. Pedrozo – SoftDesign’s CEO) was able to listen to me and understand my vision of the future for Miotec. He didn’t want to sell me a ready-made product, he offered me a solution that could be expanded in the future, and warned me about the importance of making a conscious investment”.
A Creative Planning Process
With the partnership established, the first step was to start Product Inception a creative process that SoftDesign has been carrying out since 2016. Its purpose is to define the objectives of the project, plan the software development, and define the necessary investment.
Initially, the idea of Mioflux was quite broad: a healthcare software that could receive several applications and serve the most different types of hardware. But, through market research carried out with health professionals, it was possible to understand the actual pains and needs of the personas.
In this way, technical and design requirements were prioritized for the first MVP (Minimum Viable Product). SoftDesign’s team of Designers created the product prototypes, focusing on an easy and intuitive interface. The Product Manager, in partnership with the development team, focused on backlog estimates and release strategy.
Focus on Healthcare Software Development
While the Miotec team worked on the hardware, the SoftDesign team developed the healthcare software. A communication protocol was created in partnership, so the information transaction had the best performance.
The SoftDesign team opted for development with Electron, a multiplatform web technology; and used React to create the interfaces. The visualization of the graphs was done in D3.js, and its creation in real-time uses HTML5 associated with Canvas. The database chosen was NeDB, as it is lightweight and allows working with documents (exams).
Following the Agile Method, fortnightly meetings were held, in the sprint deliveries, for alignments and route corrections. Through the Jira tool, everyone was able to monitor the evolution and speed of work daily. According to Fabiano:
“All of this provided transparency, both for Soft’s managers and for us, the project’s investors. So it was possible to fix problems quickly, and we achieved our goal. The product is already on the market and we have received many compliments”.
The Future of Mioflux
The Mioflux is a kind of scale, with a measuring cup, connected to the electromyography sensor (hardware). When the patient urinates in this equipment, it measures the time for the first drop to fall, the volume, and the urinary flow; and transmits this data to the system (software).
With this information, the physiotherapist prescribes the appropriate treatment, which can often be performed with the aid of Mioflux. This is because the equipment also has a visual biofeedback: a screen with colored circles that the patient can follow to learn to relax or contract the pelvic muscle.
Hundreds of physiotherapists already have the equipment in their offices. In a constant dialogue with users, Miotec receives feedback and works on the evolution of the product.
The next step is to extend home care, as many people are not comfortable urinating in clinics. With that in mind, an application will be developed soon, which will enable the sending of information between the patient and the healthcare professional.
We will continue working together with Miotec to support the implementation of its manifesto: taking care of subjectivity through technology.
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