Heart disease is our nation's leading cause of death and the death rate from heart disease for the middle-aged is on the rise. Frustrated by reactively treating patients with cardiovascular disease, Dr. Michael Farmer, M.D. was inspired to launch a preventive cardiology practice powered by technology, which led to the founding of Corverix in 2020.

He was seeing a focus on reactive and illness-based care, rather than a preventive and longitudinal model. In parallel, doctors and health systems were ill-equipped to integrate device wearable technology and biomarkers. Michael felt there had to be a way to guide individuals to change behaviors earlier in life to mitigate the need for costly procedures and care down the road. There was a tremendous opportunity in guiding useful interpretation of wearable data.

The COVID-19 pandemic was a catalyst for virtual patient and doctor interaction. The timing felt right to further evolve Corverix with the primary product being a mobile application that helps inform virtual, on-demand cardiovascular care. Corverix began looking into options to support the growth of both the business and their product suite. They wanted to prioritize audience expansion and robust subscription capabilities to begin driving revenue into the growing business. 

Corverix was made up of a variety of technologies and integrations, including an iOS App built in React Native, a website for both potential and current customers, and a provider platform. Having a partner that was able to bring a wide breadth of knowledge and support all platforms out of the gate was important. It was also crucial to find a partner with experience in healthcare, particularly HIPAA compliance. After a few conversations, Michael felt confident that thoughtbot had the expertise as well as the understanding to be his technology partner.

thoughtbot and Corverix took a phased approach to iterating on the platform by anchoring features which directly impact customers’ ability to sign up for a paid subscription. The thoughtbot engineering team outlined a Kanban approach to quickly tackle items with the goal of continuous, effective delivery and weekly releases. The first focus was enhancing the subscriber workflow, which included sign up, payment, ongoing telehealth support, and ensuring data collection of all user attributes was HIPAA compliant. The second phase was focused on bringing together the client and provider workflows, supporting additional data capture, deeper integration, improved accuracy with Apple HealthKit, and integration with the completed subscription-based work.