Bringing SulAmérica into Mobile Health World with New App

As smartphones grow in popularity worldwide, more companies are realizing the power that these devices have in reaching customers. One industry where the use of smartphones is growing is insurance.  Many companies are creating their own mobile apps to reach customers and make their lives easier. We at Ci&T recently had the privilege of working with SulAmérica to design and launch its first mobile app for its health plan customers.

SulAmérica is one of Brazil’s largest independent insurance companies. Ci&T’s high-performance teams were tapped to design and launch its app for the iPhone and Android. The new app offers SulAmérica’s health plan customers digital ID cards, on-the-go access to plan and claims information and a comprehensive list of accredited doctors and pharmacies throughout Brazil, all at their fingertips.

The digital ID cards included in the first version of the app free up members from always carrying actual, and sometimes multiple, ID cards in their wallets. The app also provides claim status updates, detailed information about individual plans, as well as SulAmérica company policies and a searchable database of accredited doctors and pharmacies in Brazil. Users can search by specialty and location and save their favorites for easy future access.

Since most people rarely leave the house without their smartphones, the goal of the SulAmérica project was to provide customers with valuable information they may need on the go. The current app is the first step in bringing the company into the world of mobile healthcare, and we are already working with the SulAmérica team to make the second version of the app more robust, by adding additional services to meet their customer’s evolving needs.

Our team utilized the Google App Engine cloud environment to build the app. We have been working with this cloud environment on many successful projects, and joined the Google Cloud Platform Partner Program this summer. On our projects, including this one for SulAmérica, we have experienced the secure and robust integration with backend IT systems that Google App Engine allows. While most apps are developed with standard platforms such as Java and .NET, we are proud to lead the trend of leveraging the cloud for application development and provide our customers with the benefits of its speed, cost-savings, reliability and security.

As SulAmérica continues their mobile journey, we hope that other companies in healthcare and additional industries will learn from their example and start creating mobile apps of their own to benefit customers. In today’s world, success is in providing information to your customers where and when they need it. We are helping SulAmérica achieve this goal, and look forward to the next steps in the project’s evolution.