At Arkathon Hacking Health Valais in June 2016, participants could choose to address a variety of problems posed by healthcare providers. One of these caught the eye of the future founders of Qadmium: “SOS planning”, proposed by the University of Lausanne’s Medical Outpatient Clinic (PMU). A team of developers therefore got together to work non-stop, over the 48 hours of the Arkathon, on the development of a software solution. Today, the Qadmium start-up has just been created and is continuing to work on the development of a SaaS platform for HR planning and management.
Shortly after Arkathon Hacking Health Valais 2016, Fabien Dubosson and Roger Schaer, both research assistants at the Institute of Information Systems of the HES-SO Valais decided to continue to develop the solution begun during the Arkathon, so they set up their own start-up, Qadmium. They are now looking to collaborate more closely with the PMU to develop their platform. The aim will then be to develop and market a planning management solution designed for companies operating in a range of fields.
Interview with the two founders of Qadmium, as they look back on their adventure and the Arkathon experience.
Can you tell us about your start-up?
Our start-up, Qadmium, aims to develop innovative and intelligent software solutions for SMEs, with special emphasis placed on ease of use. Our company’s pilot project is a service tool to help with designing and managing work schedules.
Where are you up to with your planning project now, a few months after the Arkathon?
We are currently in a development phase:
On the product side, after the Arkathon demonstrated the feasibility of the project’s core to us, we decided to concentrate on developing the web platform, which will allow us to distribute the product as a service. The platform has been designed in such a way that it will be possible to extend our offer later, without affecting the user experience, visit website .
On the business side, we have begun building the brand image for our start-up, by choosing a name and logo, registering our name on social media and the web, and creating a website and our business cards. We have also entered The Ark Foundation’s pre-incubation programme in order to receive some coaching to help us with that side of things.
On both sides, the project is making smooth progress. It may not be progressing particularly quickly, but that is all to the benefit of creating a healthy foundation on which, we hope, we will be able to build a solid project. Check out best interior painters in houston.
What are the latest developments?
We are now finalising the basis of our web platform.
This forms the single entry point for our services. Anyone can create a user account on our system, and this will soon allow them to use the services we shall be making available. With a single mouse click, we can also create a new client area for our future commercial clients, whose data will be segregated from the rest of the database. We are currently working on employee management and the management of access rights to the different services.
What do you remember most about the Arkathon experience?
The first thing that springs to mind is that the other groups who took part are all early nighters – they were all in bed by 3 am!
Joking aside, we’ve participated in two Arkathons so far and will definitely be taking part in the next one. It’s a very intense weekend, but also very enjoyable and rewarding. The atmosphere is very friendly, with a constant flow of music and, for people who enjoy creating, it’s a very fruitful weekend. It’s also a worthwhile event for people who struggle to find ideas but who have other skills and want to get involved in a project.
Looking back, what did you use the 48 hours of the hackathon for?
The initial 48 hours of the Arkathon enabled us to satisfy ourselves of the product’s feasibility. The time limit meant that we were obliged to concentrate on the core product, on the planning and on the optimisation itself, without having to – or indeed being able to – concern ourselves with any associated functionalities, such as managing history, exporting data or even the concept of a login. Although these functionalities are all essential for marketing a product, their feasibility no longer needs to be studied actionac.net. As a result, we reached the end of the Arkathon with a Proof of Concept that demonstrated the feasibility of the product’s core functionalities and the conviction that we had the capability to create a more substantial project.
What are the next steps, and the next developments that can be expected?
Now that the basis of our platform has been established, our next step will be to integrate the planning software, and to improve it to meet the needs of the market. This will be the milestone that marks the achievement of MVP (Minimum Viable Product) status.
We already have some ideas for future improvements for our product, for example using Machine Learning to pre-fill future schedules intelligently. We are also thinking of some more-innovative ideas that would require a change in the way our society works. For instance, using “wish lists” to allow employees to manage their work schedules themselves, based on the company’s needs.
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Interview by Swiss Digital Health – November 2016