Alere: 75% Improvement in Time to Market

From design to production in less than half the time

Initially, Alere Health considered an internal Java development effort to build Apollo, but the estimated time to market was unacceptable. Instead, they chose Pega for its rapid delivery, real-time rules processing and customization capabilities, which enabled business and IT to collaborate. Using Pega, a team of business users and subject matter experts were able to deliver Apollo – from design to production – in less than half the time estimated for the internal development effort. The result included significant new capabilities, such as smartphone mobility, as well as nearly all the functionality of the six existing clinical platforms Apollo was replacing. The new capabilities included disease management, patient case management, and wellness. Subsequent enhancements took as little as six weeks to bring to market.

Robust Clinical Platform for 25 Million Participants

Apollo is Alere Health’s third-generation platform for care management. The health management system supports care management with device support (e.g., weight scales, blood pressure cuffs, glucometers) for personal health and fitness monitoring, case management, health and wellness and provider integration. The platform’s Health Portal facilitates provider and participant engagement, including mobile access to the portal’s personal health record (PHR). A key aspect of the new platform is functionality that dynamically creates highly specialized workflows. Using Pega’s modular approach and dynamic rules management capabilities, Apollo’s care plans are automatically modified as new data is obtained. The new platform has scaled up well, with over 25 million participants and approximately 5,000 clinical users, including over 2,000 nurses and more than 50 physicians. More than 300,000 data records from biometric devices and reference labs are processed daily, and 100 million transactions are processed monthly.