Case Study
Modern infrastructure and development process delivers quality applications at speed for medical waste company Sterilis Solutions
OUR CLIENT
Sterilis Solutions manufactures an innovative IoT device that reduces biohazardous waste volume by converting federal and state-regulated hazardous medical waste into sterile, confetti-like waste that can be safely discarded as regular trash.
The patented solution is the only device that remediates medical waste materials (i.e., syringes, needles, gauze, and medical masks) at the point of care. It also addresses medical waste disposal in a more climate-friendly, sustainable way, replacing the expensive and arduous task of hauling waste to landfills or incinerators.
The Sterilis devices are used at hospitals, COVID-19 testing sites, ambulances, laboratories, airports, fire departments, and other locations across the country.
THE CHALLENGE
COVID-19 vaccine rollout spurred need to bring better quality products to market faster
As the country prepared for a massive vaccine rollout, Sterilis needed to quickly ramp up the production and quality of its devices and applications to meet the increase in medical waste. Because Sterilis' devices are mobile and used at the point of care, real-time data analytics were needed to test the temperature and pressure inside each device during operation to meet regulatory requirements after each use.
Sterilis partnered with UST Xpanxion to perform an evaluation of its current application development process, which determined that quality assurance automation and application testing were required for a faster time-to-market. Also needed was the ability to perform near real-time data analytics to accurately test and measure data from each device during operations, ensuring that regulatory levels are met with each use.
THE TRANSFORMATION
New implementations improved product quality and time to market while meeting real-time safety regulations
After conducting a holistic evaluation, the UST Xpanxion team formulated a detailed plan to improve the current infrastructure and development process and Identify trends and patterns in near real-time. The team modified the existing infrastructure to improve Sterilis’ security and gain the flexibility to adjust to any size workload. The team also added a serverless database that provided:
- Real-time analytics, data recovery, and failover redundancy to reduce network downtime
- A distributed relational database to help simplify the configuration, operation, and scaling of the relational databases used in applications
- An automated test framework to automate application and integration testing
In addition, our team of software developers built a web portal to provide Sterilis’ customers with more visibility and allow them to submit support tickets, view real-time and historic graphical statistics on the health of their devices.
To further meet Sterilis’ need for quality applications delivered at speed, UST Xpanxion streamlined the client’s application development process from a rigid, top-down technique to more adaptable Agile methods better suited for complex projects like IoT applications. Agile methods embrace uncertainty and enable team collaboration while instilling visibility and continuous learning. We then organized and facilitated training sessions for key personnel to educate them on the modernized cloud infrastructure and the newhttps://www.ust.com/en/what-we-do/digital-transformation/agile-transformation
Agile app development process.
THE IMPACT
Once these solutions were deployed to Sterilis’ cloud infrastructure, the client achieved:
- 100% faster deployment times with more successful outcomes
- Reduced network downtime by 100%
- Improved application and device quality and performance
- Reached 95% coverage of automated testing code.
RESOURCES
Custom application solutions to boost time to market and avoid costly proofs of concept