Mental Health Software Audit and Evolution Planning for an American NGO Helping 15,000 Patients

About the Customer

The Customer is a US-based independent nonprofit organization focusing on mental health disorders. With an in-house team of psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, and speech therapists, the organization released over 2,000 clinical research papers and developed a robust set of mental health educational materials.

Besides scientific and educational materials, the Customer creates evidence-based therapeutic programs for mental health, learning, and behavioral disorders. These services are provided offline in the NGO’s offices, via online video calls, and through dedicated software for mental health assessment and exercises.

The Customer was experiencing issues with its mental health software suite, such as poor performance, software defects, and security concerns. At the same time, the NGO was considering implementing new software functionality to streamline medical assessments and research. To address these challenges, the Customer sought a long-term healthcare IT outsourcing partner to audit the current version of its mental health software. After the audit, the Customer planned to engage the same IT vendor to modernize the software, implement new features, and provide continuous support and maintenance services.

With 19 years of experience in healthcare software development and a team of 750+ diverse IT talents, ScienceSoft has met all the Customer’s requirements.

Comprehensive Mental Health Software Audit and Evolution Planning

ScienceSoft’s project team included a project manager, a healthcare IT business analyst, a UX business analyst, and a solution architect.

To promote continuous dialogue between the project team and the stakeholders on the Customer’s side, ScienceSoft opted for an Agile project management approach and split the process into 1-week analysis cycles dedicated to the four key software components:

• A cross-platform mobile app (for iOS and Android).
• A web app for clinicians.
• An admin panel.
• A library (with exercises and assessments) and a physician tool for custom assessments, exercises, and research surveys.

Since the mental health software had insufficient documentation, ScienceSoft interviewed the Customer’s stakeholders to understand the existing care processes. The team manually explored the functionality of the software modules and analyzed the solution’s architecture and source code.

UX audit

ScienceSoft analyzed the existing mental health solution to identify the main user scenarios (for clinicians, admins, and patients) and assess the transparency of software navigation and logic. Based on the UX research findings, ScienceSoft prepared a report documenting the identified problems, a UX refactoring strategy, and the updated UX wireframes for the software.

Code audit

ScienceSoft’s team reviewed the current mental health software architecture and source code and assessed its quality, security, maintainability, readability, formatting, performance, and configurability. We also conducted a QA documentation analysis to assess the software testing strategy, test coverage, and bug reports. To ensure PHI security, we analyzed the data protection measures implemented in the software, assessed the security controls, and identified potential code vulnerabilities.

Software evolution planning

Based on the Customer’s needs and the audit results, ScienceSoft’s business analysts defined the goals for software refactoring and evolution, designed a project roadmap, and estimated the project budget. Working together with the stakeholders on the Customer’s side, ScienceSoft planned the new mental health software features. They were to improve the patient assessment workflows, the accuracy of the assessment results, and the reporting processes.

Full Mental Health Software Audit and Action Plan Delivered in 4 Weeks

Within four weeks, ScienceSoft conducted a full audit of the mental health software ecosystem used by the NGO, documented the issues found, and created a software evolution roadmap. The software required full refactoring, including architecture and infrastructure changes, and redevelopment of several software components from scratch (the clinician web app and the admin panel). The Customer received a detailed refactoring action plan and comprehensive UI/UX and code audit reports.

Satisfied with ScienceSoft’s practical advice and technology expertise, the Customer involved our team in the consequent software refactoring and evolution project.

Technologies and Tools

React.js, React Native, TypeScript, Python, Firebase, Redis, PostgreSQL, AWS.