I was approached in late 2016 fix issues and complete development on a simple home monitoring system. Doing my part to transform this system from a clone of hundreds of other monitoring systems to a truly unique Telehealth ecosystem was one of the most challenging and rewarding tasks of my life. AlwaysNear is finishing trials now and should launch in early 2021.

The client approached me in late 2016 about fixing some issues on their existing web application and completing a few features left over from their previous developer. I reviewed the site, defined the terms of the contract, and began work. The original application was written in PHP, used a MySQL database, and was hosted on a VPS.

Within a a few weeks it became apparent that the current system would not support the user volume that the client desired so I helped develop a new business model and application that would handle the desired workload. The new plan took about 8 months and included:

• A modern UX and improved usability
• A shift toward telehealth
• Retiring development of custom hardware in favor of third-party device support via cloud functions and APIs
• iOS, Android, and PWA support with Ionic
• A NoSQL database
• A redesigned hub application written in C# to collect telemetry data from Z-Wave sensors and perform edge tasks

View the AlwaysNear app in the Google Play Store and Apple App Store.

Now utilizing more modern technology and poising itself as an innovative tech company, AlwaysNear Telehealth needed a logo that represented that change. The client wanted a logo that included the company name and conveyed the concepts "remote" and/or "cloud" so that is what inspired the first rendition. The colors were also updated from purple and green to blue and grey. The client used this logo for almost two years before deciding to simplify it further. The current version is a simple A and N (representing the company name, AlwaysNear) and uses only one color.

The website once served as a portal for clients and partners as well as an information hub for the product/service. Most of these features have been moved to the app so now the website is used primarily for informational purposes. It was built on WordPress to take advantage of the CMS, frequent patches and updates, and low barrier to entry compared to coding HTML or using a more complicated CMS.

By early 2018 there was a lot of excitement from potential customers but the client didn't have an efficient way to provide basic information about the system. I suggested a commercial-style video and got to work on the script. This was a low-budget effort and we only had 3 days to complete it so I wrote the script, sent it to a voice actor for narration, found and edited the stock videos, created the intro and outro, and edited everything with a few hours to spare.