Doktuz is a Lima-based preventive healthcare startup revolutionizing healthcare in Peru and other Latin American countries. The company’s mission is to make healthcare services more digital, convenient, and patient-oriented.

As part of their efforts, Doktuz developed a mobile application enabling its users to access medical information and services from the comfort of their own homes. The company has already enlisted several healthcare providers, doctors, and laboratory staff to offer in-home services ordered directly through the app.

Doktuz is now ranked #1 in Peru’s Apple and Google Play app stores under the Health & Fitness categories, for providing the essential health-related information and services to Peruvians during the COVID-19 pandemic crisis.

Pivoting to support a country overwhelmed and in crisis

Like most countries around the world, the Coronavirus has rapidly spread throughout Peru, forcing everyone into isolation with limited access to essential resources and services.

To manage the impact of the outbreak, the Ministry of Health (MOH) created a direct phone line to screen people experiencing symptoms associated with COVID-19.

It didn’t take very long for the hotline to be inundated with callers, leaving many unable to get through to the MOH for help. This meant that those at risk were unable to access the services they needed to get an official diagnosis.

Doktuz believed that, with a few critical enhancements, their app could really help. The startup saw an opportunity to make improvements to their app with additional features to assist the MOH in reducing the number of incoming calls to the Coronavirus hotline, and opening up a new online channel for inquiries.

They developed a chatbot “DokBot” that asks users standard questions to help determine whether or not the individual should or should not be directly connected with the MOH to take an official COVID-19 diagnosis test.

Doktuz also added an online chat feature so users could speak with available licensed doctors 24/7.

At the same time, while shifting their priorities, Doktuz also transitioned their entire team to work from home.

Doktuz already had monday.com in place, which made the teams’ transition to remote working seamless. The platform has allowed everyone to continue collaborating while also being able to create new processes to support their evolving roles and needs.

Creating workflow apps in minutes to support the MOH

The teams at Doktuz were able to create multiple workflow apps in monday.com to quickly better manage the enhancements they were making to their app so they could start supporting the MOH immediately.

Quality Assurance (QA) testing with the whole team’s help

Every new product feature requires QA testing to ensure the app continues to function as expected.

Since the Doktuz app didn’t have as many new versions to deal with as they do now in the wake of their COVID-19 crisis pivot, developers had previously managed the QA process in Jira.

“We’ve moved away from Jira and created a new workflow app in monday.com so that non-devs can report bugs quickly and easily as well,” says Uriel Benita, Product Manager, who is currently in charge of QA processes. “Building this process in monday.com allows everyone in the company to be included in the process.”

Now, anyone on the team can report bugs on the QA board, adding detailed information and a screenshot of the problem in the updates.

And, every time a new item is added, Uriel is automatically assigned to the bug to review and assign to a developer to resolve to keep the process moving quickly and efficiently.

Information about Coronavirus is continuously evolving. The team at Doktuz added another new workflow app to manage their push notifications.

The doctors and content marketing team work together on the messaging to draft the right messaging that developers can then take from the board and add as a push notification in the Doktuz app.

“When the Ministry of Health adds new criteria for considering testing for coronavirus, we want users to go back in the app and redo the questionnaire with the chatbot. So we draft up messaging altering users that there is new criteria and we encourage them to do the questionnaire again in a push notification,” says Uriel.

Dotkuz is now working on adding these new capabilities in the app to give other Latin American countries access to the chatbot and the ability to speak with licensed doctors around the clock in hopes of alleviating the pressures on the MOH in those countries as well.

“We are continuing to build our new essential processes and workflows on monday.com as the needs arise,” says Uriel.