EyecareLive transforms the healthcare ecosystem with Enhanced Support, a support service  from the Google Cloud Customer Care portfolio.

Telemedicine is now mainstream. It exploded during the COVID-19 pandemic. A 2022 survey by Jones Lang Lasalle (registration required) found that 38% of U.S. patients were using some form of telemedicine. This number is expected to grow as consumers are demanding more convenient and immediate access to care, and doctors are seeking efficiencies, cost savings, and to forge closer relationships with patients. 

But because the eye-care field is so heavily regulated, optometrists and ophthalmologists face more technical hurdles to perform telemedicine than their peers in other medical practices. 

To join the telemedicine revolution, a generic technology solution wouldn’t do. Eye-care professionals need a more carefully architected and rigorously secure platform – one that ensures a very high degree of compliance and privacy.

EyecareLive provides exactly that. Their comprehensive cloud-based solution was built specifically for eye-care telemedicine practices. They not only facilitate telemedicine visits with patients via video, but help providers stay in compliance with complex industry regulations.

What’s more, EyecareLive is the only platform in the industry that conducts vision screening using Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-registered tests to check a patient’s vision before connecting them to a doctor through a video call. The doctor can thus triage any issues immediately and quickly determine the right next steps for proper care. In addition, their platform digitally connects optometrists and ophthalmologists to the entire eye-care ecosystem, including other doctors for referrals, insurance companies, hospitals, pharmaceutical firms, pharmacies, and, of course, patients.

On top of all of this, the automated back office for their eye-care practices processes electronic health records (EHRs), clinical workflow, billing, coding, and more into one platform. EyecareLive streamlines operations and frees up doctors to focus on delivering the highest possible eye healthcare and on building stronger relationships with patients.

“Considering the number of plug-and-play services that Google has built into the Google Cloud Healthcare solutions, Google is basically supporting the entire healthcare industry from an infrastructure provider point of view.”  — Raj Ramchandani, CEO, EyecareLive

Seeking greater agility, EyecareLive migrated to Google Cloud

EyecareLive is truly cloud first. They had operated entirely in the AWS cloud since opening their doors in 2017. Several years in, they decided to look for an additional cloud provider with broader support for digital health platforms. They specifically wanted to migrate to one they could rely on to deliver plug-and-play services, which would accelerate innovation of their platform. Rather than re-architecting for a new cloud, EyecareLive wanted a cloud platform that would offer compatible services they could use to meet their needs for reliability and availability.  

“If we want to deploy a new conversational bot or build AI models that assist doctors to diagnose based on a retina image, Google Cloud provides these services which are  reliable and tested by Google Cloud Healthcare solutions in many cases.” — Raj Ramchandani, CEO, EyecareLive

Versatility was another requirement. The EyecareLive platform must fulfill the demands of a variety of organizations — doctors, pharmaceutical companies, clinics, and others. EyecareLive also has an international deployment strategy that goes far beyond offering a domestic telehealth solution. Therefore EyecareLive needed a cloud functionality that extended into the broader global eye-care ecosystem.

EyecareLive chose Google Cloud. The most compelling reason was the deep industry expertise found in Google Cloud for healthcare and life sciences. This distinguished Google Cloud from all other possible cloud providers considered by EyecareLive. “We like Google Cloud because of the differentiations such as Google Cloud Healthcare solutions, computer vision, and AI models that can be used out of the box,” says Raj Ramchandani, CEO of EyecareLive. “We found these features more robust for our use cases on Google Cloud than any other.”

“Google is heavily into its Healthcare Cloud. That’s what differentiates it. We love that part because we can tap into innovative healthcare cloud functionality quickly.” — Raj Ramchandani, CEO, EyecareLive

Key to production deployment (and beyond): Google Cloud Enhanced Support

As a cloud-born company, EyecareLive had an exceedingly tech-savvy team. But the migration was a complex one that involved migrating third-party software and networking products that were tightly integrated into EyecareLive’s own code. The team knew it needed expert help with the migration. What’s more, doctors, patients, and other users required 24/7 access to the platform, and any interruptions to availability or infrastructure hiccups during the migration would disrupt their online experiences. However, the EyecareLive team was already stretched by continuing to grow and innovate the business, so they asked Google Cloud for help.

EyecareLive purchased Enhanced Support, a support service offered by the Google Cloud Customer Care portfolio. Specifically designed for small and midsized businesses (SMBs). Enhanced Support gave EyecareLive unlimited, fast access to expert support from a team of experienced Google Cloud engineers during the intricate, multifaceted migration.

“It was my top priority to engage Google Cloud Customer Care to help us keep the platform always available for our doctors and users,” says Ramchandani. “The level of detail to the answers, the clarifications of having the Enhanced Support experts tell us to do it a certain way has been enormously helpful.” 

For example, one of the valuable features delivered by Enhanced Support is Third-Party Technology Support, which gives EyecareLive access to experts with specialized knowledge of third-party technologies, such as networking, MongoDB, and infrastructure. This meant all components in EyecareLive’s infrastructure could be seamlessly migrated to Google Cloud, and afterward EyecareLive could lean on Enhanced Support experts to continue to troubleshoot and mitigate issues as necessary.

“The response times to the questions and issues we had when going live was fantastic. It was the best experience with a tech vendor we’ve had in a long time.” — Raj Ramchandani, CEO, EyecareLive

With Enhanced Support at their side, EyecareLive was able to get up and running quickly in preparation for their international expansion by using Google Cloud’s prebuilt AI models, load balancers, and networking technologies that were designed to be easily deployed across multiple regions throughout the globe. “We know exactly how to implement data locality to scale our deployment into different regions and into different countries, because we’ve learned that from the Google Cloud support team.” — Raj Ramchandani, CEO, EyecareLive

EyecareLive then proceeded to rapidly scale their business, knowing that Google Cloud would ensure they could meet compliance standards in whatever country or region they expanded into.

“Since we’ve moved to Google Cloud and chose Enhanced Support, we’ve had 100% availability. That’s zero downtime, which is incredible.” — Raj Ramchandani, CEO, EyecareLive

Enhanced Support also provided the capabilities for EyecareLive to:

  • Resolve issues and minimize any unplanned downtime to maintain a high-quality, secure experience for doctors and patients during and after migration
  • Acquire fast responses to questions from technical support experts 
  • Learn from guidance from the Enhanced Support team beyond immediate technical issues 

EyecareLive builds momentum toward their vision for eye-care telemedicine  

By working closely with the Google Cloud Enhanced Support team, EyecareLive was able to successfully migrate their platform. 

“If you ask any of my engineers which cloud provider they prefer, they’d all respond ‘Google Cloud,’” says Ramchandani. “The documentation is there, the sample code is there, everything that we need to get started is available.”

EyecareLive was then able to go on to grow and scale their business in the cloud in the following ways: 

  • Successfully managed a complex migration with minimal disruption and maximum availability, ensuring a consistent, secure, and compliant-ready experience for doctors and patients
  • Gained the trust of both doctors and patients – they know that EyecareLive protects their sensitive medical data
  • Kept EyecareLive agile and focused on innovating forward rather than building new features from scratch by supporting the team as they took advantage of Google’s tailored, plug-and-play technologies
  • Analyzed performance over time to plan for future growth by partnering with Enhanced Support for the long term

“We know we can rely on Google Cloud from a security point of view. We love the fact that Google Cloud Healthcare solution is HIPAA compliant. Those are the things that make us trust Google to do the right thing.” — Raj Ramchandani, CEO, EyecareLive

With Enhanced Support, EyecareLive sees a bright future in the cloud

With the help of Enhanced Support, EyecareLive brings digital transformation to the eye-care in the healthcare industry by integrating the entire ecosystem of eye-care partners onto one platform making EyecareLive a leader in their industry.