Aifred Health, a Montreal-based firm specializing in artificial intelligence and medical technology, developed, in close collaboration with mental health clinicians, an application that enables diagnosis and treatments for depression. Their team of AI specialists developed a proprietary machine learning model to address the challenges with treatment selection using a novel approach. In order to place this technology in the hands of real clinicians and patients for clinical trials, Aifred turned to Spiria for help in developing a cross-platform SaaS application that would integrate their AI technology in a timely manner.
Aifred Health
Health and medical devices
The Background
Worldwide, depression affects one in nine people at some point in their lifetime. Depression and anxiety levels worsened considerably during the recent pandemic, in Canada as well as in the US. Treatment for these mental illnesses, however, has not evolved much in decades. Medication selection is based on trial and error, which is seldom efficient. Nearly 70% of patients feel no relief following their first treatment, and 30% of patients are deemed in therapy failure after the fourth unsuccessful treatment. Aifred’s mission is to significantly improve the treatment of depression by leveraging machine learning technology. Its efforts have already been recognized in the prestigious XPRIZE competition, winning first place in North America and second place worldwide.
The Solution
Spiria’s experts started out with an exhaustive audit of the existing code and helped the Aifred team define the type of minimum viable product (MVP) that could support the launch of the clinical trials and validate their methodology. They then laid the foundation of a cloud computing architecture and updated the user interface. During the development process, which took place in a classic Agile sprint cycle, the team faced the same regulatory challenges typical of any application dealing with medical data: personal data protection laws, requirements issued by Health Canada, the US Federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), and a number of ISO standards. In the end, the MVP went live on time, thanks to a sustained and ongoing collaboration between the Aifred and Spiria teams.
The Services
- Base code audit
- User experience design (UX)
- User interface design (UI)
- Cloud computing architecture
- Security and compliance with standards and regulations
- Custom cross-platform application development
- Quality assurance and automated testing
The Results
Aifred now has the use of a reliable platform to launch its first large-scale clinical trial with ultimately up to 350 North-American patients. The application is fully functional on mobile devices (Android, iOS, iPadOS) and on all web browsers, which makes it more widely usable. Initial tests in actual settings showed encouraging results: 92% of patients found the tool easy to use, and 86% of doctors deemed it useful in making treatment decisions. Equipped with a robust and scalable software solution, Aifred can turn its complete focus back to the core of its business: perfecting an AI model that will bring significant improvement to the treatment of depression and alleviate the burden of patients and their loved ones.
Having the Spiria team as a software development partner truly helped our ability to design and implement a modern and scalable SaaS solution without compromising strict timelines and compliance requirements.
Kam Lee
Vice President, Software Development, Deployment and Security
Aifred Health