Background
WPA, a not for profit health insurer helping private individuals, families and all businesses from micro-enterprises through to blue chip global brands access the very best healthcare, wanted to give customers choice, convenience and control without compromising service. Through the WPA Health App, customers now have the option to interact with WPA however they want, at any time of day or night.
Challenge
WPA wanted a mobile app that their customers could use to submit two types of claim: a simple claim and complex claim. This would be a first in the industry.
The application uses several web services to provide an Application Interface (API) to the data stores. Versioning and targeting of mobile applications and APIs require a developed deployment plan, to ensure that the version of the application is communicating with APIs for the corresponding environment. As part of the development we would need to create our own versioning method – Azure API manager and other versioning tools existed but didn’t fit our requirements or the various systems.
One of the main advances in capability would be to incorporate some of the data. We had to figure this out as there was no guide how to do this and we could not ask the developer community on the public web. We also had to work out how we could adhere to the WPA’s licensing and security requirements within the new solution.
Other uncertainties included:
- How would we design the software to integrate with the existing format of WPA's claims procedures?
- How would we integrate WPA’s licensing and security behaviours into the new systems?
- Would the interface provide sufficient links with all areas of the main system?
Solution
To facilitate the online claim functions and support the user interface, we first had to refactor the existing software. Because of system constraints we found we needed to export all the client user’s data in the current format. We had to compose and convert this data in a form suitable for the mobile app application platform. Continued user acceptance testing of each component of the app would reveal further issues, which we implemented fixes for as we progressed.
More detailed testing showed that the original app was using Javascript and HTML5, and not device native code. After we had settled on the data API we were able to design a format to allow the system to perform well across all devices.
We converted the licensing and security code to link in all the data in the new format. Initial testing of the installed application identified there were major conflicts in the interfaces. For example, security and access rights had to be granted sufficiently high access to allow the reporting tools to reach all areas of the database even when the user access rights had been restricted. Additional reports were added to the system to identify and resolve future security issues should they arise.
Our design partner company Elixel developed the screen designs for the new app to match the user experience we needed. The designs and implementation satisfied the requirements to provide users with their claim information and make the two types of insurance claim while keeping a complex product straightforward for customers.
Results
260,000+ logins since relaunch in November 2019
25,000+ claims made via the app
2 mins to authorise a claim
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