2010 in Review: Medsy

Over the coming month, we’ll be reviewing some of Mobile Distortion’s accomplishments during 2010. Today, our product guru Gui Dall’Stella takes us through the trials, tribulations, and eventual success of our medication adherence tool, Medsy.

“App idea – call me.” With this one line email on September 9, 2009 the seed for Medsy was born, as our Product Designer, who already juggled a battery of prescriptions for a chronic condition and was then also taking medications to fight off a nasty cold, realized that he needed a better way to manage his medication schedule. After the many trials of putting together a team, and designing, developing, and testing an application while still working for The Man, Medsy was finally launched five months later, on February 19, 2010.

Due to limitations with the then-called iPhone OS (now iOS), the first versions of Medsy relied on a Push Notification Server to deliver medication reminders. This limited Medsy’s device-compatibility strictly to the iPhone — as connection to cellular network was required for sustained functionality — and also rendered the reliability of alert delivery susceptible to the unpredictability of reception issues. In retrospect, this Push Notification Server scenario generated the most bugs for us, and the most user experience issues for our users.

Needless to say, we were more than happy when Apple introduced the support of device-generated Local Notifications with the release of iOS 4.0. Not only did this allow us to exponentially increase the reliability of the medication reminder alerts, bit it also broadened our reach to the vast install base of iPod Touch devices.

In recognition that Medsy is still a young product with much room for improvement, our promotion efforts this first year were fairly modest. On World Health Day, Medsy was provided FREE for all users who downloaded it from the App Store as an effort to raise awareness about the importance of medication adherence. This campaign gathered some media attention, being mentioned on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW), as well as MacWorld Italy and other outlets. Medsy also enjoyed the honor of being among the health apps reviewed by the New York Times, and the nationally syndicated YOU Docs.

While the majority of the activity on Medsy’s support page on Get Satisfaction related to the push notification issues mentioned above, that forum also provided great insight into the features users would like to see to make the app more useful and user-friendly. That, in conjunction to numerous suggestions submitted via email, is the basis for the next major release of Medsy currently in the works (release date TBD).

It has been a great first year for Medsy, and we are very, very grateful for our users who were patient with our initial Push Notification Server challenges, and candid with their feedback and suggestions. Medsy was created to make managing your health easier, and with your help we are confident that it will just keep getting better at that. Thank you, and stay tuned!

Read more about Medsy at medsyapp.com.