Transforming Primary Care: A Case Study in Evolving From Start-Up To Scale-Up

Transforming Primary Care: A Case Study in Evolving From Start-Up To Scale-Up

This presentation, delivered by Leander Vanderbijl, focused on the journey of transforming primary care through the phases of start-up and scale-up. It emphasized the evolution of systems, architectural challenges, and strategies in finding product-market fit.

• Introduction: The presentation began by highlighting the unexpected shift in product requirements and architectural challenges faced during system evolution.
• Core Challenges: The company navigated complexities in digital transformation, particularly moving from purely digital meetings to incorporating physical branches, and adapting to diverse regional market requirements.
• Domain-Driven Design: The company applied domain-driven principles to regain control over the architecture, facilitating clearer structure and developer guidance. This approach enabled better management of complex interdependencies.
• Adapting to Change: Emphasized the transition from a product-focused to a client and functionality-centered system design, which allowed for more deliberate and structured system evolution.
• Operational Complexities: The presentation detailed operational complexities such as data sharing restrictions, various reimbursement models, and adapting to different healthcare regulations across regions.
• Strategies Implemented:
  • Standardizing service architecture using domain models.
  • Consolidating overlapping services to reduce complexity.
  • Developing adaptable systems to support integration with diverse healthcare data systems.
• Lessons Learned: A reflected lesson was that continuously evolving systems with a focus on operational sustainability can handle change more effectively, contributing to strong architectural foundations and improved service delivery efficiency.
• Speaker's Closing Note: Leander underscored the philosophy that working systems are preferable over the promise of new systems, advocating for pragmatic and structured approaches in evolving systems to maintain business agility and effectiveness.

Overall, this session provided insights into managing growth phases in healthcare technology, underscoring the importance of strategic architecture and adaptive problem-solving approaches in a dynamic industry.

This is the end of the AI-generated content.

As our company developed through startup and scale up phases, our systems grew larger and more complex. Our usage increased dramatically and our requirements ballooned. In this session, we will look at how our software and architecture developed into a Conway’s law spider web of interdependent services. We will show how we used domain driven principles to give our systems structure and provide guidance to our developers. We will study the complexities of operating in the health care industry and analyse the strategies we used and the lessons learned as the company evolved and found product market fit.