The purpose of life is a life of purpose

Why 2020 has made the team at Softwire think about our purpose 

The events of this year have given us all reason and (lots of) time for self-reflection. Many of us have probably found ourselves questioning what’s important to us and what really makes us happy, in both our personal and professional lives. At Softwire, during the Covid-19 pandemic we have been fortunate to work on three really exciting projects, all centred around creating and developing technology for good. These projects have made us think more about our purpose at Softwire. We know we make great software that meets our client’s needs, and we are now looking to answer, why do we do what we do? And how can we best use our skillset (making software) to help others? 

Our first project was with Quro Medical, a South Africa cased digital health company. Quro Medical was developing a service which would enable patients to be safely discharged from hospital sooner than would otherwise have been possible. This would free up both hospital beds and clinician’s time. The service was in the early stages of development ahead of a planned launch in South Africa, when the world was hit by Covid-19. This meant a spike in hospital bed demand for Covid patients with serious symptoms, coupled with the need to minimise the number of other patients attending hospital. Quro knew a quick launch of the service would facilitate the release of hospital beds, while enabling Covid-19 patients with mild symptoms to self-isolate at home, under the remote care of clinicians. We worked with Quro to design and build a secure and easy-to-use cloud application to enable authorised clinicians to remotely monitor their patients. Our patient-monitoring application MVP was ready within four weeks. Following extensive testing, Quro was able to onboard the first patients in just 10 weeks. This brought forward the launch by several months and was in time to make a difference in the fight against Covid-19. You can read the full case study here. 

We also worked on a fantastic project for Pungo, a tech for good company which focuses on promoting wellbeing and reducing loneliness. We helped built its Joy web app for Age UK which will be used by healthcare workers to digitise the monitoring and referral activity of social prescribers to help track the wellbeing of elderly people. Another great tool to help combat loneliness in the elderly which has been exacerbated by the pandemic! 

Last but by no means least, we joined forces with Potential Plus UK, which works with children and young adults with special educational and/or social and emotional needs, to help ensure they build key skills alongside their academic education, in order to achieve their full potential. We built a web app for Potential Plus UK learners and carers to track skill development, employing a mobile-first design to allow easy access from smartphones. 

These three projects have really helped us to focus in on our purpose at Softwire. Happy teams, alongside happy clients and happy money (commercial success) has always been one of our founding principles, and we want to ensure our employees find their everyday work as fulfilling as possible. Each of these projects has cemented a commitment to actively seeking out these types of projects where we can really use our skills to have an impact on the health and wellbeing of society.  

Looking to help make the world a better place and need the right tech to support your ambitions? Email us at [email protected]