The Challenge

An industry-leader in biomedical technology had developed a tablet application to configure the distribution speed of medication to neurological trauma patients through a surgically-implanted pump. The application, however, suffered from performance issues and long load times that hindered the user experience.

The company had spent over one year developing this application using a Microsoft technology stack. The PC tablet which was home to the application used an embedded form of Windows XP but lacked a graphics chip that could handle the application’s WPF user interface design. This led to load times approaching 30 seconds upon startup and after pushing a button, as well as lag between dragging functionality and the on-screen cursor. The issues were particularly problematic due to the client’s desire to further leverage this platform when developing additional applications to interact with other medical devices. These problems posed the threat of becoming recurring themes.

The Solution

Magenic’s principal consultant began by working with two of the client’s development teams: the five-person platform development team and the six-person application development team. Magenic conducted performance analysis of the existing code and provided help documentation with recommendations on how to improve performance on the current and future applications. Specifically, the documentation featured Microsoft .NET development and optimization tips as well as some tactics to enhance the slow boot-up time for the platform and application.

The client was so pleased with Magenic that it kept our consultant on board for an additional nine months to implement the code changes on the application that wasn’t yet feature-complete. This involved learning the business and industry language, as Magenic firmly believes that it is irresponsible to write code without knowing the industry for which the application is being written.

The Result

Magenic’s enhancements over the final nine months of the engagement resulted in noticeably faster performance for the application. Load times were reduced by over 60% – from 25 seconds down to eight seconds. Enhancements to the WPF code eliminated lag time when executing drag functionality as well. The improvements were well-received and noticed on an executive level within the organization.

When the performance phase of the tablet application development project was complete, Magenic’s principal consultant presented to over 40 of the client’s developers on the inefficiencies which Magenic had fixed, how the changes were implemented, and how similar situations could be avoided when developing applications for this platform in the future. The client was provided with techniques to better utilize .NET as an application platform and more optimal uses of WPF code. Given the client’s ultimate goal of creating a medical device suite of multiple tablet applications for multiple physical services, Magenic’s consultation set up future success and helped ensure that optimal performance will be achieved the first time.

Code optimization presentation to client’s developers.