Health and fitness app case study

From eCommerce plugin to enterprise healthcare platform

Semapen needed more than another plugin and another workaround. It needed a secure, scalable healthcare ecosystem built for clinical workflows, NHS integrations and the future of digital healthcare.

Quick look

✅ Enterprise healthcare platform spanning web, Android and iOS

✅ Automated clinical triage and onboarding workflows

✅ Secure NHS integrations and healthcare-grade infrastructure

✅ Connected devices and real-time patient monitoring

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Project profile

The client

Semapen

Semapen is a UK healthcare provider specialising in medically supervised weight management. Its programmes are supported by clinical expertise, digital tools and personalised patient care.

  • NHS Any Qualified Provider (AQP) status
  • Founded by leading bariatric surgeon Professor David Kerrigan
  • Combines specialised clinical support with innovative digital health technology
  • Operates in one of the UK's fastest-growing healthcare sectors
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The problem

Healthcare-grade technology built on consumer-grade foundations

Semapen's original platform had grown organically around WooCommerce.


While suitable for managing transactions, it was never designed to handle complex healthcare workflows. Semapen needed patient triage, prescription management, clinical monitoring and NHS compliance – all features that WooCommerce struggled to deliver.


The result was a fragmented platform that struggled to scale alongside the business. It meant:

  • Notifications were unreliable.
  • Clinical processes involved unnecessary manual work.
  • The underlying architecture lacked the resilience needed for medication management and patient safety.


Semapen's ambition – and its patients – deserved better. That's where we come in.

Our solution

A bespoke healthcare ecosystem built around safety, automation and scale

WooCommerce architecture unsuitable for healthcare workflowsing performance, flexibility and future growth

Fully bespoke healthcare platform, featuring:

  • Dedicated application servers and databases
  • Purpose-built patient management architecture
  • Infrastructure designed specifically for healthcare operations
  • Enterprise-grade scalability and resilience

Manual administration creating operational bottlenecks

End-to-end workflow automation, covering:

  • Patient onboarding and subscription management
  • Prescription and dosage tracking
  • Clinical reviews and alerts
  • Accounting and payment processing

Need for seamless integration with NHS services

Secure healthcare integrations, enabling:

  • Automated NHS referrals
  • Patient record creation
  • Compliance with NHS onboarding requirements
  • Support for healthcare reporting and governance obligations
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Patient engagement and adherence challenges

Rich digital health experience, featuring:

  • Native Android and iOS applications
  • Push notifications, SMS and email communications
  • Automated weight monitoring with connected smart scales
  • Educational content and gamification features
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Project timeline

1

Discovery and technical planning

2

Backend architecture and NHS integration planning

3

Patient platform and clinician portal development

4

Mobile app development and UI/UX refinement

5

Security testing and optimisation

6

Launch and ongoing feature development

Roadblock…

In healthcare, you can't accept second best when it comes to patient safety or patient data.


Semapen relied on a complex patient triage process. Adding automation – even with clinical oversight – required bulletproof precision with no room for error.



The same approach applied to downtime and data integrity. When patient health is at stake, anything less than zero tolerance isn't worth tolerating.

…Averted

We made patient safety and data integrity our guiding principles throughout every stage of the project.


For patients, it starts at the moment they sign up. We built a sophisticated onboarding and triage engine, incorporating multi-stage patient assessments, detailed comorbidity scoring models and clinical escalation pathways for high-risk patients.


This wasn't a simple yes/no questionnaire. Our platform captures severity scores, medication combinations and risk factors to support safer prescribing decisions.


And underpinning it all was a healthcare-grade infrastructure built on multiple layers of security and resilience. That included:

  • Blue-green deployments for zero-downtime releases
  • Intelligent logging and diagnostics
  • Multiple system redundancies
  • Continuous monitoring and alerting



Every action within the platform is recorded and auditable, allowing for complete visibility over who changed what, when and why.


Finally, before the platform launched, we conducted a full penetration test. The result: a perfect pass. 

The results

From online shop to healthcare operating system

Today, Semapen operates on a purpose-built digital platform supporting large-scale healthcare delivery.


What began as a simple web application has transformed into a sophisticated healthcare ecosystem, combining:

  • Cross-platform mobile applications
  • Clinical triage and prescribing workflows
  • Connected health devices
  • NHS integrations
  • Automated patient monitoring
  • Enterprise-grade infrastructure



Most importantly, it gives Semapen the confidence to scale without compromising its greatest asset: patient care.

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