The RND Group Builds Cloud Solution for Infectious Disease Surveillance and Reporting

The RND Group worked with an industry-leading molecular diagnostics instrument company to provide a cloud-based product that provides users of the company’s instruments with the ability to view and report on de-identified patient test result data, quality control data, and calibration data. The developed cloud solution also is used by public healthcare organizations to track and monitor trending data for various types of contagious diseases.

The RND Group was recommended to this leading instrument company based on an executive manager from the company working successfully with The RND Group at a previous company. At the time (2012), this leading instrument company was searching for a software partner who had expertise in writing FDA-regulated software and who had experience in developing and deploying cloud-based software solutions. This company recognized that a cloud-based infectious disease surveillance and data reporting solution was both a strategic need for their instrument hardware and a competitive differentiator for their instrument products. The RND Group developed and deployed a pilot cloud-based surveillance and data reporting solution in less than 6 months. This cloud-based solution has grown from a pilot, proof-of-concept project, to a mission-critical cloud solution that provides analysis and viewing of millions of test results. Public health organizations, such as the CDC (Center for Disease Control), rely on the cloud-based system to support their mission of monitoring and managing the public’s health, with the CDC receiving a feed of infectious disease reporting data on a daily basis from the cloud solution. The cloud solution currently has hundreds of active users, with adoption increasing daily.

The RND Group provided full life cycle software services to this leading instrument company in the development of the cloud solution, including analysis, requirements definition, software design, software implementation, software verification, software unit and integration testing, and deployment and management of the solution to the cloud. The result of this cooperative effort is a cloud solution developed using design control procedures required by the FDA, that is state of the art in terms of use of cloud technology, web-based user interface and functionality.

The solution developed by The RND Group includes integration with the private, third-party device cloud, a full-service consumer web site, and a cloud-based integration service that is responsible for data import, data export, and API services. The architecture chosen has allowed the project to successfully transition from pilot usage to today’s usage of high volume data importing/exporting and high numbers of concurrent users. The RND Group is actively maintaining and enhancing the cloud solution and participates, with the instrument company’s IT staff, in managing the cloud solution.

The RND Group has worked with the leading companies in the medical device industry since 1997. The RND Group fully understands the rigor required in designing, developing, documenting, and testing products that are regulated by the FDA. The RND Group has applied that rigor to the software engineering support it has provided for countless product development efforts, and The RND Group can point with pride to products that have been successfully introduced into the medical device marketplace.

Capabilities Applied
FDA Part 820, Part 11ISO 13485, HIPAA, IEC 62304software life cycle processes multi-cloud development and deployment API definition and development third party API integration requirements development and management project management software verification

Software
Web user interfacesAzure cloud service interfaces HTTP REST API definition and usage integration with third party APIs for geo spatial data display and postal address lookup

Technologies Used
Azure Web Roles Azure Worker Roles Azure Service Bus Azure Blob storage Azure Table storage C#ASP.NET MVC ASP.NET Web API JavaScript HTML5 XML JSON Azure SQL Database Quartz .NET