On Thursday 10th May, we got dressed up and headed for Hartham Park in Corsham for the Techie Awards, Swindon and Wiltshire 2018.
We were one of the finalists in the ‘Cutting IT’ category and are delighted to announce that we won! The Cutting IT award recognises emerging technology and is for a company ‘working with ground-breaking technology or producing products that could revolutionise the future for consumers and/or corporates’.
“Being involved in The Techie Awards is great for us. It gives us an opportunity to talk about all of our work, including the pioneering work we do in global health, and it gives our team recognition for the great work they do every day. We very much appreciate the Techie Awards and The Business Exchange for supporting our industry in such a positive way.”
James Fry, Managing Director, Blue Frontier
Working with Alere, a global leader in medical research, diagnostics and point-of-care testing, Blue Frontier developed a web-based platform to support their connected health programme for the screening and monitoring of HIV in sub-Saharan Africa.
Medical device connectivity is of significant importance to global health, as its implementation continues to lead to improved patient diagnosis, monitoring and treatment. As a result, the World Health Organization has set an ambitious target for that all sites using WHO-recommended rapid diagnostics tools to transmit results electronically to clinicians and information management systems by 2020.
The Alere Pima™ CD4 Analyser device was deployed in a number of countries in Africa and they required a solution to transmit test result data to a centralised data warehouse. Its aim being to extend quality laboratory services to rural populations, effectively maintaining central laboratory control and monitoring while improving service delivery and patient outcomes.
With the project brief, and working closely with their team, we utilised the expertise of our designers, developers and technical specialists to develop a minimum viable product, which would form the initial implementation of a continuous development programme.
The platform had to collect, collate and analyse test data and visualise it in an accessible and intuitive way.
The specification of the platform is a changing consideration of the project, we have had to be flexible in all aspects of design and architecture. We use wireframes and graphics packages to produce design concepts and mock-ups and collaborate with the client to produce the end result.
Quality assurance is essential due to the nature of healthcare, and our developers use test-driven development to safeguard quality in delivery.
The practice focuses on repeating a short development cycle and testing functionality to ensure that requirements are met. A new feature’s requirement is identified in user stories, so that the developers can fully understand its purpose before writing any code. This ensures that the code is focused on fulfilling its requirement and makes it clean, clear and simple, and reduces defects.
The end product, the Alere Data Point™ portal, receives point-of-care diagnostics data, which is transmitted from remote locations to a central repository, enabling real-time analysis and visualisation of statistics for improved device and disease management.
We are fortunate to have the development capability to support Alere’s connectivity objectives and make a positive difference to global healthcare. With the success of the project, our relationship with Alere has flourished and we continue to provide development for Data Point™ and other technical projects.
Blue Frontier is an ISO 13485 Medical Devices accredited company which means that we follow a robust and audited quality management system for all projects to ensure that we always deliver products that meet both customer and regulatory requirements.
Four of the Blue Frontier team went along to the event and all really enjoyed the evening. The attendees included our Digital Director, Mike Bunn, Social Media Consultant, Sammy-Jo Wilsher, Technical Co-ordinator, Amanda Wigmore and Office Co-ordinator, Joe Evans.
“We had a wonderful evening and thoroughly enjoyed the whole event. There was a great relaxed atmosphere, and the catering was all done very well. We were absolutely delighted to pick up the award for Cutting IT and the rest of the company were equally pleased when we told them the good news the next day! Thank you to everyone involved for putting on such a great event.”
Sammy-Jo Wilsher, Social Media Consultant
We would like to say a huge thank you to Anita Jaynes for organising the awards, as well as Swindon & Wiltshire Local Enterprise Partnership, The Business Exchange Swindon & Wilshire and all of the staff at Hartham Park for hosting us.
Also, congratulations to all of the other winners! It was great to see so many forward thinking tech companies under one roof.
We're looking forward to next year!
Meet @TheTechiesUK winner @bluefrontier #TheWiltshireTechies https://t.co/fOeHOyQcNu
— TBE Swindon & Wilts (@TBESW) May 17, 2018
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Digital Marketer
Charlie started at Blue Frontier in 2017. He brings with him a passion for creative writing and experience in content and social media - his favourite channels being Twitter and Instagram. Charlie is also developing his knowledge and skills in SEO, hoping to combine these skills to help businesses with their online visibility.
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