Transformation, AI and Data: Cyber Security

How Amara Therapeutics is Transforming Healthcare with TEKenable | Customer Testimonial

In the rapidly evolving field of digital therapeutics, Amara Therapeutics stands out as a trendsetter. Led by CEO – Brendan Staunton, the company is on a mission to develop innovative treatments delivered directly to patients’ smartphones. One of their primary focuses is creating a digital therapeutic for overactive bladder, a debilitating condition affecting approximately 100 million women worldwide.

To bring this groundbreaking product to market, Amara Therapeutics partnered with TEKenable, a company known for its expertise in healthcare software development.

The decision to collaborate with TEKenable was influenced by their impressive track record and their ISO 13485 certification, the gold standard in healthcare software development. This certification was crucial for Amara Therapeutics. They aim to secure FDA and CE approval for their product in Europe and the US.

The collaboration with TEKenable has been a rewarding experience for Amara Therapeutics. Staunton praises the TEKenable team for their top-class talent and dedication. The primary goal of the project was to develop a robust software platform tailored to the unique demands of healthcare. This involved creating a sophisticated functional document that served as the blueprint for the entire development plan. From the outset, cybersecurity, information security, and data management were integral components of the project, areas where TEKenable’s expertise proved invaluable.

Throughout the development phases, the project faced various challenges.

However, these obstacles only highlighted the exceptional quality of the TEKenable team. Their ability to tackle problems and devise innovative solutions enhanced the final product. The result was an ISO 13485-compliant software as a digital medical device standard treatment platform, comprising iOS and Android apps, as well as a clinician portal backend. Additionally, a series of treatment algorithms were developed to integrate the user interface with the backend.

The complexity of the project was immense, requiring the integration of multiple factors such as cybersecurity, information security, and data protection from the beginning. Despite these challenges, the final product exceeded expectations. Staunton expresses immense satisfaction with the outcome, noting that the robust platform is well-prepared to meet regulatory approval standards in both the US and EU.

Communication and collaboration were key to the project’s success. Staunton emphasises the importance of effective communication when developing software externally. The close working relationship between Amara Therapeutics and TEKenable was instrumental in navigating the project’s numerous decisions and challenges. TEKenable’s responsiveness and proactive approach ensured that the project progressed smoothly, even when faced with unexpected hurdles.

Looking ahead

Amara Therapeutics is preparing to initiate a large randomised control trial involving 10 hospitals in the US. This clinical study will be one of the largest ever conducted in the field of overactive bladder and the largest using a digital treatment approach. Following the trial, the company plans to apply for regulatory approval in both the US and Europe, paving the way for commercialisation.

The ultimate goal is to make this innovative product available to patients worldwide. Helping as many people as possible benefit from the hard work and dedication of both Amara Therapeutics and TEKenable.

Irish Motor Insurance Database Implemented to Help Detect Uninsured Vehicles and Drivers

Each year, insurance claims for uninsured vehicles cost €60-€70m million.

The system will significantly increase the number of detections and reduce the incentive for people to drive without insurance.

According to The Motor Insurance Bureau of Ireland (MIBI), there are about 184,000 uninsured vehicles on the road. This represents about 8.4% or 1 in 12 vehicles, which is very high relative to other countries. The detection of vehicles without motor insurance is a very important task for the Gardai and the Roads Policing unit, in particular.  The Insurance industry, in cooperation with Insurance Ireland, the MIBI, An Garda Síochána and the Department of Transport, has implemented a central insurance database which is referred to as the Irish Motor Insurance Database (IMID), which will help identify uninsured drivers. This database is underpinned by Legislation under Section 78A of the Road Traffic and Roads Act (2023), which requires all insurers to provide motor policy information to the database. 

The IMID is made up of two separate databases, including the Motor Third Party Liability (MTPL) Database and the National Fleet Database (NFD). The MTPL database contains policy, vehicle and driver details for private motor and small commercial vehicles, while the NFD contains policy, vehicle and driver details for fleet vehicles and motor trade vehicles.  

“In Ireland, it’s compulsory for all vehicles to have motor insurance.  If any person suffers physical injury and property damage that’s caused by an uninsured vehicle, MIBI will deal with the claim and pay compensation to the victim.  MIBI, as a not-for-profit organisation, is financed by levies on the insurance industry which. These levies are ultimately paid by law-abiding insured motorists with €30-€35 included in the premium paid by drivers,” explains Tom O’Brien, Technical Claims Manager at MIBI. 

“This puts an extra burden on law-abiding drivers and motor insurance companies while the person with an uninsured vehicle attempts to get away without paying anything. However, the MIBI has strong powers of recovery and will pursue uninsured drivers through the Courts to seek recovery of money that’s paid out in compensation to claimants. The introduction of IMID will be a game changer for the Gardai as they will now be able to immediately check the insurance status of both vehicles and drivers when they interdict a vehicle on the road.”

TEKenable was selected as the preferred solution provider because of the company’s experience and expertise in the marketplace. As a Microsoft Gold Partner, TEKenable could deliver the complex project and develop software to extend the functionality of the solution.

Working closely with the insurance industry, through Insurance Ireland and the MIBI, TEKenable identified the need to provide an efficient and cost-effective solution for insurers and the Gardai to meet the obligations placed on them by the legislation.  TEKenable designed and developed the Motor Third Party Liability (MTPL) Database and the National Fleet Database (NFD) which will assist the Gardai in enforcement of insurance requirements in the Road Traffic Act. This will ultimately help to reduce uninsured driving which in turn will reduce premiums and improve road safety.   TEKenable implemented the system on Microsoft Azure Cloud as it was perfect for this project from the perspective of security, scalability and rapid solution building. It uses a server-less computing model in Azure with micro-segmentation of services along with SOC/SIEM for security and a PaaS database service handling a number of large-scale data repositories.

The IMID integrates with the underwriting platforms of approximately 40 insurers. When completed, MIBI will provide data to Garda systems, including the Garda roadside mobile application and the National Vehicle & Driver File (NVDF) at the Department of Transport. The IMID is one of the largest financial services databases in Ireland today, as it contains details on over 3m vehicles and over 5 million drivers that are insured to drive those vehicles. 

The complex and sensitive database will allow Gardai, the Department of Transport and the MIBI to see real-time insurance data pertaining to motor vehicle policies and the drivers covered by those policies. The IMID will replace an earlier central insurance database (ANPR) that was also developed by TEKenable but is now retired. 

“The new system delivers a safeguarded, distributed database that connects insurers, MIBI, the Department of Transport and the Gardai, giving them highly secure access to motor insurance data at any time.  

When the data in IMID is shared with the Gardai, it will facilitate live access to insurance data by Gardai at the road side through their mobile devices. This will allow them to check the insurance status of both vehicles and drivers that they have been stopped.  

This will help reduce uninsured driving and improve road safety,” concludes Tom O’Brien.   

TEKenable built the system, which gives all parties more real-time visibility to the information that is required by all stakeholders.  It’s a robust, secure and compliant cloud system.  As a technology provider, TEKenable is our partner of choice on this project as the company offers a proactive and innovative service.  The team are experts in Microsoft and emerging technologies, and they are always willing to go the extra mile.”

“IMID is a very complex and highly secure system that allows access to public-facing elements as well as closed interfaces that are only accessible to insurers, MIBI, An Garda Siochana, and the Department of Transport.  It is a multi-year, multi-million euro insurance industry project that TEKenable played a lead role in designing, developing and ultimately hosting on behalf of the industry,” Tom O’Brien (Technical Claims Manager, MIBI).

Independent Trustee Company – Microsoft Dynamics 365 Platform

Independent Trustee Company (ITC) is one of Ireland’s leading providers of self-administered pensions with over €1.2 billion of client funds in 4,000 pension structures.  Established in 1992 and employing almost sixty staff, ITC also acts as a trustee of self-administered schemes, private trusts and larger occupational schemes. Moreover, ITC is among one of the founding members of the Association of Pensioneer Trustees in Ireland.

THE CHALLENGE

ITC realized that its existing legacy system was incompatible with new business needs. A huge number of spread sheet macros had grown up across the organisation, making the work look chaotic, untidy and all over the place. Many of organization’s processes were still quite manual and crying out to be automated. A new platform was needed to make business processes more efficient and effective, without increasing headcount.

A thorough analysis and mapping of business processes, which needed transformation, was done, resulting in a list of more than forty processes, ranging from complex scenarios like adding new customers, which required digital signatures and AML compliance, through to simpler processes like ‘transfer of funds’, where customers wished to allocate money between investments, which needed to be revamped.

THE SOLUTION

ITC turned to us (TEKenable), its long-time technology services provider, with years of experience in providing companies with innovative, modern IT systems to integrate with their existing legacy systems. Having worked with ITC for more than a decade, we were intimately aware of the company’s existing IT infrastructure.

We earlier worked with ITC to eliminate paper-based processes and built iTrust – a platform holding details of all client investment information. This project was a huge success, reducing costs significantly, making business more efficient and positioning ITC to thrive despite the severe recession that hit in 2008.

“ITC is a very successful company and has built a very strong position in the market for self-administered pensions. The challenge now is to grow revenues by winning new business and to do this without a big increase in headcount. Deploying Phase 1 of our new platform will allow us to manage new customers acquisition more efficiently and to better serve our customers, once we on-board them.
We’re happy we selected Dynamics and we look forward to working closely with TEKenable to deliver Phase 2.”

Eamonn King – Head of IT dept. at ITC

After long discussions within the client ITC, it was decided that the solution will be implemented in an array of phases, with Phase 1 of ‘quick wins’ and high impact improvements and a Phase 2 to further extended automation across the business.

Phase 1 is complete and operational where TEKenable provided ITC with a platform – Microsoft Dynamics 365 – which best met their vision for proficient business operations. Dynamics 365 was successfully implemented and integrated well into the existing Office 365 environment. ITC already had access to SharePoint under its E3 license, so it made sense to integrate Dynamics with SharePoint for document storage and management.

THE OUTCOME

The solution has enabled ITC to manage all the activities involved in onboarding a new client – entirely through Dynamics 365. It is also integrated with iTrust, the bespoke ITC system holding customer account and investment information.

Moreover, the solution eliminated a wide range of manual processes and enable ITC to use one centralized system for clientele management. It also enabled ITC to save human capital costs, enhanced their business activity, and lowered the cost of maintaining exhausted and weary old systems in place.

HRB LINK – A Unified Health Information System

The Health Research Board (HRB) is a statutory body under the aegis of the Department of Health.  The Health Research Board (HRB) is Ireland’s lead agency supporting and funding health research. The HRB’s mission is to improve people’s health, patient care, and health services by leading and supporting research and generating knowledge, then promoting its application in policy and practice. The HRB focuses on research that helps to drive innovation in Ireland’s health system and supports economic development.

The HRB manages five national health information systems namely:

  • National Drug Treatment Reporting System (NDTRS)
  • National Psychiatric Inpatient Reporting System (NPIRS)
  • National Intellectual Disability Database (NIDD)
  • National Physical and Sensory Disability Database (NPSDD)
  • National Drug-Related Deaths Index (NDRDI).

THE CHALLENGE

These information systems provide information regarding disability service, admission and discharge of patients, alcohol and drug treatment, and record of deaths related to drug abuse for policy, service planning, and research. So there were five systems in place, which were doing more or less the same job, each for a different health segment.

This created challenges regarding support and maintenance of infrastructure as each system required a separate set of service providers, additional cost in staff training, and overhead expenses. Moreover, due to the lack of integration within systems, getting timely access to updated information was time-consuming.

THE SOLUTION

HRB chose TEKenable to provide them with an integrated, unified system that consolidates all the five national health information systems into a single platform where data regarding alcohol/drug treatment and disability services can be accessed and updated when required by the health service providers.

TEKenable through its Digital Systems service worked in collaboration with the HRB to develop a unified national health information system. This information system is used by a varied set of health service users from service providers such as St. John of Gods and addiction treatment centers to subgroups within the HSE and Dept of Health and Children such as. Local Health Offices.

THE OUTCOME

The information this system helps to capture and maintain is used in strategic HRB research and reporting, annual reports, and HSE service provision planning in 5-year strategic slices.

The new national health information system has not only transformed how the HRB gathers national health data, but also generated substantial cost savings through consolidating five individual information systems onto one platform and removing multiple suppliers in providing services and support, and maintenance.

Accessing different data sets and reports has become easy as all the information is available on a single platform. Given the sensitivity of the information, special attention has been paid to the design of LINK to ensure data quality, privacy and security.

An Post – Publicity Post Website Platform

An Post is the state-owned provider of postal services in the Republic of Ireland, providing a “universal postal service” to all parts of the country as a member of the Universal Postal Union. Its business is split between two main areas (i) Mails & Parcels – which includes their rapidly growing eCommerce and mail marketing businesses, and (ii) Retail – including all expanding financial, and post office services providing a trusted gateway to government services both online and in person. An Post has approx. 7,600 staff and operates through approx. 950 post office locations, making it Ireland’s largest employer.

THE CHALLENGE

The implementation of the new EU GDPR policy, new data privacy, and opt-in rules impacted various digital channels such as Email and SMS marketing. This opened a great opportunity for services like Publicity Post, a leaflet delivery service offered by An Post for businesses to market their products. As mail and leaflet services like Publicity Post are an opt-out channel – i.e., recordable opted-in consent is not required, which is permitted by the principle of legitimate interest.

THE SOLUTION

This positioned Publicity Post extremely well in this new GDPR era as a very impactful and competitive marketing channel. And so, it is in this environment that An Post sought to digitally transform Publicity Post, making it more automated, sales, and customer-centric, whilst also aiming to capitalize on the new GDPR opportunity.

TEKenable, along with our partner Strata3, built a user-friendly e-commerce website for An Post where customers can easily log in and set up their own leaflet campaign. The website also provided a unique option of Print &  Delivery or Delivery Only, where users can select from a variety of leaflet size options, choose their delivery zones, time period for delivery, and immediate pricing based on the number of delivery addresses.

Moreover, it provided users the option to pay for the campaign by simply using their card or account. The front-end design was developed by Strata3, while TEKenable provided all the back-end administrative support systems for the service, to ensure the smooth flow of data and information between users and An Post.

Publicity Post Web Outlook

THE OUTCOME

This new Publicity Post system helped An Post successfully target new SMEs and enterprise customers. Simple and user-friendly design helped in onboarding new customers for An Post.

https://publicitypost.anpost.com

This not only increased revenue, but also ensured service efficiency, saving a lot of time which An Post staff earlier consumed in taking orders on the phone, tracking the delivery of leaflets, and updating customers about the progress of their campaigns.

This project ensured An Post’s success in achieving its two main and overriding business goals i.e. to increase the existing enterprise customer base by enhancing their experience and to target new SMEs with a service offering that meets their business needs.

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