SoftwareOne case study

24/7 online healthcare services for better patient care

Emi facilitates access to healthcare services with online chats and video calls

As a leading home care company in Colombia, Emi wanted to improve its home healthcare services delivery. With patients spread across urban and metropolitan areas of major cities, it had been difficult to provide timely and appropriate medical consultation and examination, while patients faced long waiting times for home visits.

To facilitate improved health services access, Emi teamed up with SoftwareOne to use Microsoft cloud technology and create an Azure-based online portal. Now, patients can easily sign in via Emi’s website or online application to get an immediate and professional response to their needs, via chat or video calls. The provision of these new 24/7 remote health services has also helped Emi’s patients and medical staff to better cope with the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Client: Emi Group
Industry: Healthcare
Services: Application Modernization
Country: Colombia

We wanted to improve patient care while increasing the efficiency of our services. The patient portal helps us to do both. SoftwareOne has helped us expand services and streamline access to care in ways that create a better patient experience.

Yann Hedeoux
CEO, Emi Latin America

About the client

Emi Group is a major Latin American home care services company with more than 40 years of experience. Emi’s Comprehensive Quality Policy is designed to provide quality home health care, characterized by responsive patient services delivery.

Emi's business model is based mainly on subscriptions. The company, which serves more than 1,000,000 subscribers throughout Latin America, operates more than 400 ambulances and has approximately 4,000 employees, a comprehensive network of family doctors and ten medical clinics.

Besides emergency medical and urgent care services, Emi provides home medical consultation and care, nursery procedures, remote consultation, and examination services via phone, online chat, and video calls.

The challenge

Although telemedicine technology and its use are not new, widespread acceptance among healthcare professionals and patients had developed relatively slowly before 2020. This completely changed with the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, in Colombia, telemedicine has been promoted by law since 2010, primarily to enable better care for patients in remote rural areas.

As a leading home care company in Colombia, Emi has facilitated patient access for more than 40 years. It has delivered mobile health services, phone-in appointments, and doctor’s home visits within a few hours.

However, this business model was insufficient when patients needed faster care. Also, patients wanted on-demand healthcare to accommodate busy schedules. Often, patients simply want access to medical information, advice or recommendations.

A woman and a child are watching a video on a laptop.

The solution

Healthcare on-demand

Emi engaged SoftwareOne to help change how it interacts with patients and to expand healthcare choices. That meant taking advantage of cloud technology and creating one central online portal for patients to get immediate and professional attention.

Emi’s online portal enables its patients to:

Manage their membership
Make an appointment for home healthcare services
Start a chat to ask medical questions
Make video calls to see a doctor in an online meeting

Emi’s patients can now book medical appointments and receive treatment remotely through online doctor consultations, chats, home visits, and access on-the-go. Patients can also easily access and manage personal health care information, history, and treatment plans. Remote healthcare services are available 24x7, and are accessible inside or outside Colombia.

Emi’s remote healthcare services were in place before COVID-19 and now the remote capabilities have made an essential contribution to the continuing safe delivery of healthcare in Colombia by reducing the potential exposure of both patients and medical staff to the virus.

Azure-based technology

Emi partnered with SoftwareOne to design and implement its cloud portal. Leveraging Application Services and long-standing Microsoft Azure Cloud expertise, SoftwareOne created the portal with mobile application and backend services using the Microsoft Azure platform.

With Microsoft Azure, Emi gains a flexible and scalable infrastructure, including enterprise-level management tools to monitor and analyze applications and enable planning for continuing modernization and the potential to expand the solution geographically.

Benefits and outcome

Emi’s Remote Healthcare Services are available to patients 24x7. This has successfully expanded and transformed its healthcare service offering and improved customer loyalty. Remote services have increased from 19% in 2019 to 35% in 2020.
Emi has successfully adapted new services to patient’s needs and can provide real-time professional advice and care.
Remote access to Emi's healthcare services delivers fast and easy contact with healthcare professionals wherever patients are located.
The channeling of patient requests through the new service platform relieves medical staff time and saves operational costs. Patients can make online appointments and manage personal information, while staff can respond more precisely and efficiently to patient requests, including planned home visits.
Emi's remote healthcare services, especially since the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, help to reduce the risk of infection for both patients and medical staff. Remote services have become a particularly valuable option for patients to receive medical advice and examinations securely, anytime, from home or on the road.
Microsoft Azure technology has provided Emi a flexible and scalable infrastructure that enables planning for continuous application modernization and geographic expansion. Having the right monitoring and management tools in place, Emi can easily provide remote services in several countries simultaneously.

24/7 online healthcare services for better patient care

About the client

The challenge

The solution

Healthcare on-demand

Azure-based technology

Benefits and outcome

Modern Applications

Technology Solutions for Healthcare

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