We had a wonderful opportunity to work alongside a local manufacturer of custom specialty vehicles which are commonly referred to as coaches. A large portion of these coaches are utilized by medical professionals and hospitals in varying areas of specialty such as mammography, dentistry, first aid, and basic care. Located here in Central Ohio, this family owned business has over 100 skilled employees that help to create and manufacture these custom built specialty vehicles.
Many mobile medical units do not have a scheduling system for customers or a way to display their location to patients that may want to visit them. Usually, a hospital’s mobile medical unit location information is displayed in PDF format on a sub-page of their website. This sparse amount of available information lead to a wonderful idea from our client. We were approached by them to help create a special web based application to search for and locate mobile medical units.
Our discovery process enabled us to meet and research with individuals that utilize custom coaches to provide medical care. We learned that many of these units are used in schools and disadvantaged areas. The collaboration with the customers of our client were amazingly informative and led us to a much more robust application. We learned that where we could really provide value would be to furnish an application that not only allows a patient to locate a coach, but also educates them and provides any necessary documentation to bring along with them for their visit.
Built on .Net framework with a custom content management system, the coach locator application allows the manufacturer to create unlimited instances of sites for each hospital or clinic that purchases a specialty vehicle. Each site is equipped with geo-search capability and a date selector, allowing customers to know when the coach will be in their area. Appropriate documents and educational information can be added for each site unlimitedly. Each site can be branded and customized as needed, services can be updated, and patients can schedule their appointments with a coach when applicable.
Our manufacturer has taken the coach locator application to various medical centers. Our initial feedback has been unanimously positive. As we work to gather additional feedback for future enhancements and customization, we look forward to launching and maintaining this unique application.