Overview

When Chiron contacted us, they had an ambitious idea: to develop an AI-powered application capable of guiding patients with chronic conditions through their self-care journeys, while adhering to UK market regulatory requirements and maintaining an impeccable user experience.
The goal was clear: to achieve a functional and validated MVP within a startup timeframe. This kicked off a four-month sprint, where every design and development decision had to be surgical.

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Who is Chiron

Chiron is a young health-tech company that integrates AI and clinical expertise to improve patients' quality of life. Their platform provides guided and personalized pathways, supervised by professionals, with a particular focus on data security and compliance (UKCA).
At the project's inception, Chiron had partial mockups, a set of preliminary requirements, and a strong urgency to test the model's validity.

The Challenge

• Extreme time-to-market: launching an MVP by December, starting from scratch in August.
• Evolving requirements: the regulatory and clinical context necessitated continuous adjustments.
• Rapid coordination: a team distributed across multiple time zones and disciplines (dev, design, medical, product).

Approach

To meet deadlines and quality standards, we set up a sprint-based process, borrowing best practices from tech startups.

Kick-off & Prioritization

• Initial workshop with all stakeholders.
• MoSCoW method to distinguish what was essential from what could wait.
• Definition of a roadmap with weekly milestones.

Parallel Design & Development

• Review of user flows and edge cases before each sprint.
• Rapid prototypes to validate critical interactions.
• Shared decision log to ensure traceability and consistency.

Continuous iteration

• Weekly demos for stakeholders and the clinical team.
• Immediate feedback integrated into the next sprint.

The Journey

The project evolved through four distinct phases, each with clearly defined objectives and outcomes.
In September, we consolidated requirements, translating initial needs into a clear and functional architecture for the MVP. October was the month design took shape: the first interfaces were designed and developed, bringing the application's fundamental modules to life. In November, we integrated AI components and tested them on real-world cases, gathering valuable feedback to optimize the experience. Finally, December was dedicated to refinement: targeted bug-fixing, internal validation, and preparation for release, meeting the predetermined deadline.

Results

The most significant achievement was launching a fully functional MVP on time, ready for testing by a pilot user group. The carefully designed architecture is already prepared to accommodate new features without compromising stability. User flows were optimized to adapt to the needs of a mobile context and different clinical profiles, ensuring accessibility and ease of use. The entire process was meticulously documented, providing a replicable foundation for future releases.

What We Learned

Our experience with Chiron taught us that, in projects with such tight deadlines, rapid decision-making is more important than an obsessive pursuit of perfection: every choice must be made in hours, not days. We also confirmed how essential it is to document every step, from the decision log to milestone reviews, to avoid misunderstandings and stay on track. Finally, involving the clinical team from the early stages decisively accelerated validation and ensured consistency with the real needs of the healthcare sector.

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