Xtramile solutions leverages Twilio to help serve 700 thousand patients a month
Time to read: 3 minutes
Xtramile Solutions is an Australian digital health solutions provider that enables clinical information data sharing among clinics, laboratories, healthcare professionals, and patients.
Founded by Robin Hadiprodjo, the company initially provided digital services that allowed interoperability mainly between healthcare providers. Data interoperability means that patients can have their medical records sent digitally from the doctor to pathology to radiology, then later to the pharmacy or even outside the hospital, thus eliminating the inefficiency of repetitive manual processes.
As demand for digital services skyrocketed during the pandemic, Xtramile saw the need to incorporate the patient component into its business model.
As a result, the company experienced explosive growth, having sent medical care-related SMS notifications, powered by Twilio, to as many as 700 thousands patients in a month. Additionally, Xtramile became the market leader in the digital health solutions industry, with approximately 60% of private laboratories in Australia using its services.
“We’re Twilio fans. Whenever there is a need for our customers to use SMS, chat, or video, we always use Twilio products because their documentation is pretty good which helps with our development. We are known as a rapid developer, so we can deliver products to the market to help our customers quickly. To do that, we need a skilful dev team. Likewise, we need a reliable partner like Twilio, which has a fully functional, stable system and well-documented APIs.”
Using SMS automation to 5x the number of patients served per day
When the pandemic hit, Australia faced several healthcare challenges, such as the shift from face-to-face interactions to online or telephone consultations, a shortage of doctors and medical staff, and bottlenecks in data entry and lab results.
Xtramile Solutions, however, saw these challenges as opportunities. As a long-time Twilio partner who is well-acquainted with its suite of services, the company leveraged Twilio Programmable Messaging to automate patient registrations and referrals.
In this process, Xtramile captures the patient information through its technology, and then the referrals are sent both to the patient and to the healthcare provider through the Twilio SMS API.
“The good thing about that is they don't need to visit the doctor to get a referral. They can use our platform, have a consultation, get a referral, and then go to the referred provider.”
Using this solution, a typical laboratory that used to accommodate only 8,000 patients per day because of manual data entry processes, is now able to serve as many as 5x the number of patients per day (30,000 to 40,000 patients).
At the peak of pandemic, clinics also had a 5- to 7-day turnaround time for results — not because it takes that long to process samples, but because it takes several days for medical professionals to clear the backlog of registrations. After using Xtramile Solutions’ technology, clinics can send back results within 12 to 36 hours.
“That’s what helped Australia take control of the pandemic because when COVID hit, there were more patients than what healthcare could serve,” Hadiprodjo noted.
Taking patients to the ‘next level of healthcare’ using Twilio Programmable Voice
To improve doctors’ productivity, Xtramile Solutions also created a single platform where doctors can receive patient registrations and make the calls for consultations. The company utilises the Twilio Voice API to facilitate the calls, which eliminates the need for doctors to switch to their personal phones and manually encode patients’ numbers, thereby saving time.
Moreover, the feature gives doctors more privacy, as their numbers are automatically masked and patients cannot contact them beyond their consultation period.
After several months of implementing the new service, Xtramile received feedback from patients who were commending it as the “next level of healthcare,” as they felt “very well looked after” due to medical providers calling and texting them.
Transforming healthcare and curbing the spread of infectious diseases
Despite the dwindling COVID cases, Australia still faces a shortage of doctors, with waiting times for consultations taking days to weeks. To help address this, Xtramile Solutions is looking to expand its services with a digital consultation feature, which heavily uses Twilio’s Programmable Messaging with an AI engine.
How it works is that doctors will develop clear and accurate clinical pathways digitally where patients can answer questions and receive recommendations to get tests based on their answers. Based on the test results, they will get a prescription for needed medication or get a referral to a specialist — all without having to talk to a doctor.
This type of digital consultation will not apply to all medical conditions, according to Hadiprodjo. However, he said that it could help curb the spread of infectious diseases, such as influenza, respiratory diseases, and sexually transmitted diseases, as patients’ needs can be processed more quickly. At the same time, Xtramile’s digital consultations aim to reduce the workload of healthcare professionals.
“Moving forward Twilio will play a significant role in communications for our services. That’s why we’re using it for chat, video, and SMS, which will be the case for quite some time. What we like about Twilio is from a technology point of view, it’s stable, good, and clear. So far Twilio has been accommodating us very well.”
