How we built it | CoVive
When we saw all the various solutions and apps being launched for COVID-19, we realized that there was no app that combined all possible use cases to serve people’s needs simply and easily. So we got to thinking, and then got to work, building an app that did everything we wanted COVID-19 app to do, and launched CoVive as a global initiative.
Find and upvote us on Product Hunt and download CoVive on the AppStore today.
Francisco Vega, Head of New Markets & China MD, Medicus AI:
I can’t believe it was less than a month ago that we had that first call about the corona response. At that stage, our Vienna office was still open and busy, and it was mostly China that was in the news; even Italy wasn’t on the radar yet. I had spent January in China and left just one week before the nationwide lock-down. Seeing how quickly the virus was spreading and how hard China was working to curb the spread, made me realize this was going to be much bigger, and much more global, than anyone expected, and a big threat, both to us as humans, as well as for our business. I quickly asked for a call, then seemingly a distraction for everyone working on bigger things… or so we thought. There was some resistance, but I insisted it was important for us to start thinking about how we could support it.
Dr. Baher Al Hakim, CEO, Medicus AI:
I remember when you first mentioned it, Francisco, it felt like an afterthought to me, something to research during my downtime. As you know, I read a tremendous amount of research, opinion pieces, studies… my email feeds are filled with data points, and at that stage I hadn’t connected all the dots yet; I hadn’t parsed through the data. When I finally did a few weeks later, it was early March, and after a weekend of feeling stupid and guilty for underestimating the gravity of this threat and ignoring our responsibility towards solving it, I made the call to push the (then unnamed) project to the top of our agenda and decided to mobilize more than half of our global team towards it. We needed to act fast, go wide, and be thorough to achieve any meaningful impact. As always, we started with the science.
Dr. Nadine Nehme, Chief Science Officer, Medicus AI:
This was our first big challenge. A new disease and a new virus mean that there are no pre-available guidelines or medical and scientific sources for us to carefully dig in. Yet, this was the first time the scientific and medical community opted for open collaboration in order to defeat the virus and help humanity. All efforts count, from pushing the SARS-CoV-2 sequence onto a public database to remote collaboration between the biggest institutions in China, Europe, and the US. This opened the door for scientists to publish their findings, yet, due to the urgency, some were not based on statistically significant numbers. Some of these were contradictory, but nonetheless, the vast majority contained valuable information and their availability on such short notice is remarkable and worth a round of applause.
Rafael Vartian, Head of Business Development (DACH), Medicus AI:
I remember this is when you and Baher came to me and suggested we partner with health institutions in Europe. With Vienna as our HQ, it made sense to look in our backyard, but with the support of our partnership with Roche and our long-term relationships with clients such as BioneXt LAB in Luxembourg (who we eventually partnered with for the launch), we were able to set our sights further. Thanks to our global presence, we quickly recognized that regional players had already established different (partial) solutions in many countries, but none had been able to offer a complete solution. This is why we decided to design CoVive in a modular and flexible way so it can be linked to existing solutions and add those capabilities that others were lacking. The main challenge for us was to build the car as we were driving it. Potential partners wanted to see the app, but early on it was not yet a sum of its parts. We had to encourage both imagination and faith!
Makram Saleh, Chief Product Officer, Medicus AI:
This was definitely a challenge. I remember early on when we had started to discuss what the project could be, we were thinking small, a chatbot maybe. It was when we started receiving questions and ideas from partners and healthcare professionals that we began expanding our scope into a standalone app. For us, the focus became on making it as comprehensive and as useful as possible, with a first phase product that could serve as many people as possible. Instead of thinking in terms of features, we realigned our approach to think of solutions to challenges. This was the only way to truly address what the gap was, and the best way to fill it.
Serene Touma, Head of Content, Medicus AI:
This process was a really important exercise when it came to content, forcing us to think about how we communicate in the app and around the app. Every screen, every button, every title had to be thought through and imagined with an additional layer of empathy. Considering the fear and uncertainty people were feeling had to be our number one priority, and making sure we communicated clearly was the north star we returned to over and over. Once we had an understanding of what the app would be used for, we started building our content ecosystem: our blogs, our newsletters and our social media campaigns.
Dr. Nadine Nehme, Chief Science Officer, Medicus AI:
And of course, we had the medical content to think about, which was a challenge unlike any we had ever faced. The biggest we encountered in this continually changing landscape is the rapid evolution of local medical guidelines. Medical guidelines are usually updated on a yearly basis in the best-case scenario, yet, with the new coronavirus’s fast pace, the medical guidelines are being updated regularly, sometimes even daily. We decided to dedicate more than half of our researchers and medical doctors to cover and review the medical guidelines updates per covered country on a daily basis.
Mouhamad Kawas, Chief Technology Officer, Medicus AI:
All that was left to do was develop! We had worked closely with Makram during product design, and we had a strong understanding of how the app needed to function. Before we wrote a single line of code, we had the important task of putting together a cross-functional team of our best people, and then selecting the right tech in a matter of just hours, where it would usually take weeks. Once we had settled on Flutter, we were able to quickly build one app for all platforms: iPhone, Android, and web. This meant that one development team was able to do all development work, and the QA and medical teams were able to validate the app once for all platforms, saving all our teams a lot of time.
Dr. Baher Al Hakim, CEO, Medicus AI:
Mouhamad, you left out the most important part, getting the CE certification for the app, and in record time! When I told you the team had 6 days to finish it, deep-down I didn’t think they would make it, but I wanted to push anyway. When I woke up to the message that it was done, I had to read it a second time. I am still stunned but mostly proud that we were actually able to make it happen.
Download CoVive on iOS today, and visit CoVive.ai for more information about our initiative.
