The secret to employees’ health: Start a Dialogue

But hey, we live in the digital world! What about the booming Healthtech industry? They say that many diseases can be prevented and treated virtually. One of our healthtech clients that recently visited our software development center seems to have proof.

We spoke with Alexis Smirnov, Co-Founder and CTO of Dialogue Technologies, a Canadian based telehealth company, about their solution and why they think the future of healthcare is virtual.

Yes, this is my first visit to Minsk and I find this city really splendid! I grew up in Moscow and visiting Minsk brought the memories of my home town.

Well, frankly speaking, it was just a good opportunity. We're expanding Dialogue in Germany and I visited our Berlin office and used this opportunity to spend a few days in Minsk.

Fundraising process isn't easy, however, the strength of the business, an amazing team and the bold vision helped us raise a Series B of $40M CAD. The round was led by CDPQ, one of the biggest financial institutions in the world. We were also happy to have our existing investors participate in Series B, a sign of continued support.

Telemedicine is not a new concept. But three years ago in Canada when we launched our first telemedicine service, the market was almost non-existent.

It took us four months to build our MVP product. The first paid customer came in just 2 weeks after the launch. The early reaction from the market showed a strong interest. It also was the right step to launch in Quebec, where wait times for medical services longer compared to the rest of the Canadian provinces.

From Dialog's launch, we proceeded with B2B as our target. Our friends in Montreal and other startups were among our first clients and at that time we put it clear: "You can buy another toy for your office - be it a new ping-pong table or PS - but if you really want to contribute to employees' health, offer them Dialogue."

It's a real challenge to build a new product...

Yes, and it's not enough for our technology to have a modern design, and high quality. It also should comply with laws and existing healthcare regulations. We work with sensitive medical data and with people's health - it imposes great responsibility. Sometimes we even deal with life-or-death situations and by the way, there were cases when our medical team saved lives.

In Canada, we have a strong regulatory framework that covers the services we provide. But we understand that we are doing something new and people may have questions.

As medicine is based on trusting the specialist, from the very beginning we decided to create an A-class medical team. Healthcare practitioners that work for Dialogue are carefully selected and we're very proud that our Care Team includes the best professionals throughout Canada.

A few times we tried building entire projects by external contractors, but it just did not work out. So after that, we clearly realized that we needed a partner who could seamlessly integrate into our team. Vention offered that and also gave us an opportunity to orchestrate the whole recruitment process.

Every member of the Dialogue a rigorous interview process. Technical skills of Vention engineers are world-class, so they quickly became productive members of our engineering team. We found that communication skills and language proficiency are very important to the way we work. Accordingly, we try to select people who would fit our intensely-collaborative team. This way, we can be a hundred percent sure we assembled a great team.

Dialogue currently comprises five scrum teams in Montreal, and four of them have Minsk-based members. And by the way, there are some teams that have more people in Minsk than in Montreal. So, we are considering assigning a lead engineer here in order to facilitate the process.

Yes, and it's important to note that every single person is integral to our success. They may have a different location, but they share the same goal, after all! There is no special treatment. Everyone is equal and this inevitably raises the bar for all our team members. That's how we can set ambitious objectives.

Sure. The market reality and the speed of our business require us to move fast. As our product grows, we need to grow our team fast and at scale. So, we’re going to look closer at the hiring landscape both in Montreal and Minsk.

It's basically the same. Finding talented developers is a challenge everywhere and a market like Montreal is no exception.

Assuming your rather complex team structure and such "natural" challenges as time zones difference, was it difficult to synchronize the development process?

Yes, it is always more difficult than having people in the same place. However, we adjust to each other. People start the working day later, or stay a bit later - this all helps. Of course, there is overhead, but we perfectly understand it when we start a certain project. We find that all the benefits we have outweighed the negatives.

The web apps are built with React, we're building a native Android app and our iOS application is based on React Native. The technical stack for the backend is Python with microservices architecture and AWS. Vention also helps with automating infrastructure on AWS.

AI with blockchain? [laughs]

In all seriousness, we see many opportunities in applying AI and this is an area we invest a lot into it. Dialogue already automates parts of the patient-doctor communication, and particularly with chatbots using Natural Language Processing. And we clearly observe the results when we look at the business performance. The automation allows us to provide services to more people while improving the patient experience by making it faster, safer and easier. Our AI systems don’t replace humans but work in concert with medical professionals, using a safer approach known as "human in the loop".

We deeply believe that there are no geographical boundaries to health - and everyone should have access to high-quality medical care. This is the purpose of Dialogue: to improve humanity’s health and wellbeing by removing barriers to great healthcare. So, Germany is certainly not the end of our geographical expansion. How will we expand? Every country is different. In Canada, we kicked off in one province then we covered the whole country 24 hours 7 days a week. We’re going to apply a methodical approach that makes sense for a given country.

Absolutely! We're thinking about how we can make our folks see each other more often. Such meetings are extremely helpful. A little far from Canada of course [smiles], but again, it is worth it.

Dialogue uses a modern tech stack: microservices, working in serverless mode, sophisticated Kubernetes-based infrastructure, "trendy" UI and, of course, mobile apps. Data protection and security, along with multi-region deployment are all industry-specific challenges.

The team really likes this project as it involves such perks as technical challenges, startup environment, and technically strong fellow team members. Moreover, as CTO highlights, they treat Vention's engineers the same as their onsite team.

Also, I'd rather not use such big words but the team is really proud to work on a project that is making the world a healthier place. Some businesses allow rich people to become even richer, while Dialogue helps make medicine more accessible and affordable for everyone.

As I mentioned before, we are 100% on the same page with the Dialogue team. Our engineers truly care about the project, they view it as their brainchild. This is the sort of dedication our clients seek in their software development partners.

For this project, we recommended take-charge types of engineers that are always ready to dive into the matter with a fine-tooth comb.

As Alexis always emphasizes, there are no boundaries to health. We definitely believe in this and also believe that there are no boundaries to talent. We are thankful to be a part of this game-changing cross-continental team that is building the future of health-tech.

Image credit: freepik.com