Just as the spread of COVID-19 was gaining momentum, Anthem launched a virtual care app, Sydney Care. Find out how Foxbox Digital collaborated with the Sydney Care team as the lead mobile app development partner.

How We Helped Anthem Launch a Mobile Telehealth Product During a Pandemic

On January 1st, 2020, just as the spread of COVID-19 was gaining momentum, 

, Inc., a leading health benefits company that serves over 110 million people through their affiliated companies, launched a virtual care app, 

Foxbox Digital collaborated with the Sydney Care team as the lead mobile app development partner, because of Foxbox’s experience and deep knowledge of 

Sydney Care, available on iOS and Android, utilizes AI-driven guidance to empower users to assess their symptoms and then choose the virtual care option that’s best for them. Additionally, through its COVID-19 Resource Center, Sydney Care provides an end-to-end solution that helps employees more safely return to the workplace.

“We built a solution that some of our customers have reviewed as being ‘life-changing.’ The ability to address health issues without physically going to a doctor, and in the comfort of their own home, is a rewarding experience to be part of, and we continue to see the growing impact of our telehealth platform.”

- Plamen Petrov, Ph.D., Vice President, Exponential Technologies, Anthem, Inc.

In 2020, Sydney Care was downloaded over 260,000 times, while thousands of users continue to utilize the application daily to diagnose symptoms and seek guidance for their health conditions from a device that lives in their pockets. Additionally, over 41,000 people have assessed their COVID-19 symptoms using Sydney Care.

The pandemic has forced many professionals to work from home and prevented critical care for many non-COVID patients. Sydney Care became a desired application for many people who needed preventative care, and also consumers with chronic illnesses.

“I was able to quickly chat with a doctor this afternoon about allergies and pick up my prescription within an hour. This beat taking 3-hours out of my workday, fighting traffic, and sitting in a waiting room (especially right now during a pandemic) to see a doctor. I found a new way to do health care,”

- jscrmil1, 04/14/2020 iOS App Store

A Delightful Mobile Experience (Built in React Native)

As the React Native mobile development experts, we interacted with Anthem’s Product, UX, Business, Integration, Authentication, Backend Development, and Security teams to build both iOS and Android native applications, using a single React Native codebase.

React Native allowed us to develop one app that works natively on iOS and Android instead of building two separate apps with disconnected codebases. Using React Native as the programming language enabled Anthem to streamline development and maintenance costs while still creating a stellar mobile consumer experience.

Through our collaboration and contributions, we delivered these core features and benefits:

Integrated Video and Chat for Virtual Doctor Visits

: Chat in real-time over video and text with healthcare providers.

:This triage functionality in the app allows a seamless experience for consumers to check their symptoms and get personalized guidance.

:A login-less experience for existing customers, as well as integration with other insurance providers.

: All of the technical enterprise security protocols needed without sacrificing the experience for the consumer.

: The ability to pay via credit, debit, or via insurance provider, all within the app.

A COVID-19 Return to Workplace Solution Built in 10 days

As Covid-19 started growing, we quickly pivoted along with Anthem’s product and design teams to develop an AI-powered Covid-19 daily-check in solution that helps protect workers by keeping potentially infected employees away from the workplace.

We developed the front-end and back-end of this new functionality and published on both app stores (iOS and Android) within 10 days—in addition to a previously-created COVID-19 assessment solution. This service is currently being used by many large organizations, some with 30,000+ employees, and more partnerships to come.

Better Healthcare Experiences Start with a Seamless Digital Experience

Together, with the partnership of Anthem’s robust global design, product, and integrated teams, we assisted in the development of an easy-to-use, direct-to-consumer mobile telehealth solution. With the added complexity of working within an enterprise environment, we continued to be flexible and agile in our approach of acting like a startup within an enterprise.

We’re honored to work alongside a leader in healthcare and innovation.

“They are professionals, talented, smart. They are committed, with a very strong core team. They owned the problem."

- Elliott Torres, Staff VP, AI and Architecture

REASON 1

You Can Create Great Native-Like Experiences Across Multiple Operating Systems

REASON 2

It Focuses on Developer Efficiency Across All the Platforms You Care About

REASON 3

It's Native, Really!

REASON 4

You Can Reload "Instantly" with Fast Refresh and Modern Debugging Tools You Know

REASON 5

It’s Developed by Facebook, but It’s Open-Source

REASON 6

It’s Flexible

REASON 7

It Has a Big and Active Community

REASON 8

Great Companies Are Using It

REASON 9

There Are Great Integrations To Make Your Job Easier

REASON 10

Amazing Resources Are Available Online To Get Started

IN CONCLUSION

React Native Is the Way to Go for Many Reasons

React Native created the ability to produce real Native iOS and Android Apps with a single codebase, and has changed mobile app development in a big way.

We’ve dedicated a lot of time to mastering React Native, and it’s by far our favorite framework of choice when developing mobile apps.

Here are the reasons why we love it, and recommend it so often.

React Native produces real Native iOS and Android Apps with a single codebase, and its changed mobile app development in a big way. This is why we love it.

10 Reasons Why We Love React Native *And Why You Should Too

We worked with NSLC to move them from a paper-led organization to a powerful digitally-enabled ecosystem. This included the creation of a new custom streamlined and automated scheduling system, as well as a modern customer-facing mobile app.

How NSLC's Digital Transformation Improved Operational Efficiency

The National Student Leadership Conference (

) hosts hundreds of on-campus conferences to help high school students better prepare for College. NSLC’s goal is to help students make the biggest impact on their future careers.

As their operations grew to host thousands of students and parents at one of their many conferences, they struggled with communicating scheduling and event information. This resulted in delayed communication and labor-intensive operations work to keep their students and parents updated with the latest information while making sure events run smoothly.

To support their growth goals, we worked with NSLC to move them from a paper-led organization to a powerful digitally-enabled ecosystem. This included the creation of a new custom streamlined and automated scheduling system, as well as a modern customer-facing mobile app.

This resulted in increased student engagement and parent communication, improved operations efficiency, and higher Net Promoter Score (NPS).

Here’s how our digital transformation impacted NSLC:

Hundreds of Hours in Efficiency Saved Through Automation and Digitization

NSLC’s multiple-day conferences depend on a single resource—the schedule. This schedule provided the timetable of events and event information for students and their parents in formats such as printed paper, email, and megaphone announcements.

If any information changed, it would result in a manual effort from the NSLC staff to correct and update (think: hundreds of paper schedules, reprinted and distributed to students).

When you’re working 14-hour days, every minute saved in operations is a cause for celebration.

A new automated scheduling system, built from the ground up

The schedule was the core of the student experience. This told them where they had to be, when, and what they should expect in each event. By creating a new scheduling system from the ground up, we digitized the student scheduling system and automated the creation of the digital and printed schedules.

This scheduling system not only saved the NSLC staff a lot of time, but helped the organization coordinate with outside vendors and university partners.

A new modern mobile app built with React Native

The digitization of NSLC’s business resulted in significant operational improvements, resulting in hundreds of hours saved every month.

“The staff-side software made an exponential difference in how we work. It’s so much easier! Words can’t explain how big of an impact this was for our organization,” - Susan Lowitz, Director of Operations, NSLC

Automation of paper schedule modifications

When a schedule change happens, paper schedules need to be updated. Previously, the design team would need to be notified and changes were made manually, and all of the changes involved new email notifications and paper schedule changes, sometimes resulting in confused students. Now, the new digital system makes the design changes seamlessly and automatically.

In the new digitized system, changes happened in real-time and behind the scenes. With immediate access to their updated schedules on mobile and web, students and parents had the relevant information they needed to make every session count.

“We found that parents were checking in on their kid’s schedules and activities while they were on the train, or any down moment they had. The relevant information was getting to them much quicker, and that made a huge impact on our customers’ experience,” - Susan Lowitz, Director of Operations, NSLC

Students were instantly connected with their peers

Teenagers can be shy. Connecting with other students and making friends was not always an easy activity for them. We fixed this by connecting them with other students through the Group.me chat message platform they could access through the NSLC app.

Students were interacting with other students before they even attended their first event. Connections and friendships were made almost instantly.

Student Referrals Skyrocketed and Access to Student Feedback is Now Instant

NSLC relies on survey data to improve their conferences. Traditionally, they would distribute paper scantrons and students would hand write their comments. We saw an opportunity to collect more thoughtful survey responses, as well as an ability to collect more refined data.

Session-level feedback surveys allowed for more feedback than ever before

With the new digital platform, NSLC was now able to collect surveys immediately after a session was complete.

The operations staff had the flexibility to dynamically assign session feedback to many types of events. This resulted in immediate, personalized feedback that they previously weren’t able to capture.

A dynamic database that allowed NSLC to personalize experiences.

We created a dynamic database that allowed the staff to access their student roster, with access to information needed to personalize their students’ experiences. This included their contact info, emergency contacts, dietary preferences, information on their assigned staff, and whether they were on or off-campus. This easy to access database, allowed the NSLC staff to personalize each and every student experience.

Happier Students, Grateful Parents, and a Productive Staff Results in More Student Referrals

It was more than moving from paper to digital. It was about enabling NSLC to serve their clients. As a result of an improved experience, substantially more students invited their friends for the next conference season than they did last year.

More technology isn’t the answer to everything. In some cases, more technology is a burden and doesn’t solve your current business problems. We were cognizant of this as we focused on building a simple to use platform that allowed the NSLC staff to do what they needed to do with minimal training.

Students had a more seamless experience than ever before, parents were grateful that their kids experienced the NSLC without any hiccups, and the NSLC staff was able to do it more efficiently. That’s a win-win-win for everyone involved.

If you enjoyed this case study and you’re looking for a product development agency that can help you the same way we helped NSLC, 

How NSLC’s Move to Digital Increased Parent Communication, Student Engagement, Staff Productivity and Program Referrals

Discover why more and more companies are choosing React Native to build innovative digital products.

Why CTOs Should Choose React Native as Mobile Platform

I’ll be honest, for the first eight years after iOS was released, building an application natively within iOS made sense and was the only proper decision to make. 

 had promise but lacked many core features and UX experiences that it didn’t make sense to switch over.

Native apps are considered the gold standard and offer the best overall performance, user experience, and access to hardware-related features such as support for multi-touch gestures, access to the camera, GPS, calendar, accelerometer, and much more.

But now the mobile world has moved on and React Native is the right decision for many companies.

React Native has transformed the whole dualistic notion of iOS vs. Android by creating beautiful apps for both platforms from one codebase—without compromising on the UX and UI. On a React Native app, everything you see and touch is native.

So unless you are Uber or Airbnb and can afford to spend money and time on exclusive native mobile development, your business really should be using React Native as its development platform of choice.

The reason is fairly straightforward. With React Native, you have a best-in-class framework that is optimal for 95% of all business use cases.

React Native is especially good news for CTOs and VPs of Engineering because instead of hiring two additional development teams for Android and iOS, you can leverage your existing web development team to build your mobile app. React Native represents the best organizational choice for CTOs and VPs today.

I didn’t want to start with this because I don’t think “

” is a valid excuse, but the maturity of React Native makes it an easier business case for your organization.

React Native was introduced in 2015 and underwent the initial stable release in July 2019. Over the past four years, it has become a robust worldwide open-source community with over 

 contributors on GitHub—and, of course, with the backing of Facebook. It’s also the 

 of contributors for any repository on GitHub in 2018.

React Native developers are continually building new libraries, updates, and projects. With cross-platform compatibility, shorter development cycles, faster releases, live code pushes and updates, and overall performance improvements, many have come to see React Native as the future of mobile development.

Facebook originally developed React Native as a hackathon to support its cross-platform needs. The beauty of React Native is that, unlike “hybrid” mobile app solutions, it uses native UI elements instead of rendering the entire application inside of a WebView. Your business logic is run in a separate JavaScript thread, which then controls the native UI elements. In the “old days,” companies had to develop native apps for both Android and iOS from scratch.

React Native allows developers to write code in just one language, JavaScript, then build binaries for Android and iOS. It eliminates the need to hire both iOS and Android developers to write dual applications, and this represents a huge benefit in terms of productivity, costs, and time to market. Not to mention the reduced hiring burden!

As a CTO, you’re most comfortable managing a company you understand. If you happen to be an Android “guy and need to hire an iOS developer, you’re not speaking the same language and have to work extra cycles to get everyone on the same page. This can easily lead to operations hang-ups and production slowdowns.

Being able to write once and port across each major platform means a considerable improvement in the operation of your organization. The ability to place resources on different projects and not have to worry about skillsets and whether a developer can write Swift, Objective-C, Kotlin, or Java is a huge relief.

Nearly 67% of all developers use JavaScript already, so it’s an easy sell for using React Native to improve operational efficiency across the enterprise.

There are many ways React Native saves organizations time and money. Obviously, the “one code for all” is a huge advantage as it cuts down on the learning curve and the number of hands on deck required for developing an application. It’s also open source and has a robust and growing community of ready-made components and support.

In fact, something like 95% of the React Native codebase is shared between iOS and Android. These are just some of the many reasons why React Native leads to significant improvements in ROI over hiring native developers.

As good as React Native is for all-around performance, cost savings, and portability, a few use cases will stand out that require a pure native look and feel. These are going to be the high-end enterprises, such as Airbnb and Uber that have money to spend on super-polishing their native application.

For the “rest of us,” which means 90%-95% of the business use cases, React Native will provide your organization with a highly engaging enterprise application. In other words, the reasons for not using React Native are going to be negligible.

In terms of cost-savings, increased efficiencies, and the overall native look and feel that users experience, React Native is a no-brainer!

Yes, not every app should be built with React Native. Here are some reasons to go full native:

You’re creating something with complex animations and interactions, like an interactive game.

You’re building something that’s CPU intensive, like editing photos. In that case, you could either go full native or write the complex logic in native and bridge it to React Native.

You’re creating something out-of-the-box with unconventional UI patterns. Native might be a better choice in that case.

For CTO’s, quickly getting the right products to market is all that matters. As a “learn once, write everywhere” framework, React Native cuts down enormously on the cycles required to develop and deploy user-friendly and engaging products to market. React Native is arguably one of the biggest breakthroughs in mobile application development in recent years.

, this cross-compatible platform has transformed the way companies develop enterprise-grade applications—with less learning curves, shorter development cycles, faster releases, and overall cost savings.

We’ve been using React Native since I founded the company and aren’t looking back anytime soon. You can learn more about our React Native development services 

P.S. If you’re trying to decide between React Native and other cross-platform mobile frameworks, 

Why CTOs Should Choose React Native as Their Mobile Development Platform

Home Chef partnered with Foxbox Digital to rebuild their mobile app with React Native and help them increase ratings and conversions.

How We Increased HomeChef's App Ratings

, a subsidiary of Kroger, is the third largest meal kit company in the U.S. As Home Chef was scaling their business, and providing new offerings to their growing customer base, they were looking for a modern framework with extensibility to support their new service offerings. They brought in Foxbox Digital to rebuild their mobile app with 

, a modern cross-platform app framework, to help them achieve their ambitious goals.

Through our engagement with Home Chef, we developed and published iOS and Android apps using React Native. This helped them significantly increase app store ratings, meal kit conversions, and user engagement rates.

We focused on building a great experience from the ground-up

We knew that re-platforming to React Native was only one part of the solution. We worked closely with the CTO & Head of Product to deliver an experience that delighted their customers.

Here are three of the core activities we focused on:

 - We provided early architectural recommendations based on their future technical and business goals. This included a revised roadmap that better fit their goals to maximize customer impact.

 - We seamlessly collaborated with the UX team to ensure the app was instantly responsive to the end user.

 - Customers added their first item to the shopping cart 20% faster than with the previous app.

Foxbox Digital’s deep technical knowledge of React Native helped us move quickly through technical roadblocks.

 In early stages of the development, they guided us through architecture decision and foresaw many of the issues we would run into with our current development setup. If you’re looking for React Native developers, I can’t recommend them enough. 

With thousands of paying customers on the platform already, and owned by a large subsidiary, speed-to-market is often not feasible. Our deep knowledge of React Native and our philosophy of tight product and engineering coordination allowed us to build the new iOS and Android application 

Here’s a breakdown of how we were able to move so fast.

 - Our engineering team is focused on the React Native platform. This allows us to provide deeper recommendations and build a modern architecture best suited for React Native.

Strong Relationships and Coordination With Engineering, Product, and Design

 - We know that developing an application isn’t just a list of requirements. We start every project by determining the specific goals of each team and work closely with each stakeholder to build the best product possible.

- We were instrumental through the beta testing phase ensuring a fast feedback loop from their most valuable customers, prior to launch. We quickly iterated to implement the feedback, which led to a successful launch.

I think the app is easy to use as well as navigate.

 I’ve tried other meal services and this was the best! 

We enabled them to build better features based on data

Prior to engaging with us, Home Chef was having a difficult time experimenting with mobile features. Here’s how we resolved that.

Embedded Customer Behavior Data Analytics

 - We knew that to improve the experience of the app, we had to collect data at every major customer interaction. We worked directly with their executive marketing team to implement Amplitude to track key user data points and define the events they needed to track.

 - We implemented A/B Multivariate testing functionality. Now, instead of guessing which functionality makes the customer happier, it is simple to deploy A/B Testing for both iOS and Android.

 - With React Native and Expo, they're able to publish weekly updates with the push of a button. Allows them to collect fast feedback from customers.

Simply put, Foxbox Digital was amazing from start to finish.

 Their maturity in understanding our product, engineering, design, and business needs was exactly what we needed. They were proactive and intentional in every decision they brought forward. This product is core to our experience and we couldn’t have imagined a better partner than Foxbox Digital. 

- Julian Rockwood, Head of Consumer Product, Home Chef.

If you enjoyed this case study and you’re looking for a React Native development agency that can help you the same way we helped Home Chef, feel free to 

How We Helped Home Chef, the Kroger-Owned Meal Kit Delivery Service, Increase App Store Ratings and Meal Kit Conversions

Let's compare the best cross-platform app frameworks (React Native, Ionic, Cordova, PhoneGap) to develop for iOS and Android at the same time.

Comparing Ionic vs Cordova vs PhoneGap vs React Native

I set out to build an app for myself called 

 (it’s the insider’s guide to the city).

I looked into the cross-platform frameworks available so I could build it for both iOS 

 — Apps created with these frameworks are basically websites created with HTML, CSS, & Javascript, smushed into app form. It 

 like an app. When you interact with the app, it feels slightly sluggish and not responsive.

 — This framework take an entirely different approach to hybrid cross-platform apps, and uses native UI elements, powered by Javascript. You write your app in Javascript, then 

 works some magic and turns the user interface into 

. This means that when you touch & feel your app, it 

React Native apps are snappy, responsive, and a joy to use.

. I argue that it takes less than half the time to build an app compared to full native apps, because not only do you have to build an app once instead of twice, it’s just faster to build the first app period.

Under the hood, React Native uses Javascript to run the business logic, for example handling a button click or fetching data from a server.

Technically it does this with a headless browser. Because of this if you don’t program the app right, you may see some slowness.

There are ways in which to program the app however that eliminate this problem and the user will never know the difference between a pure native app and a React Native app.

Companies including Instagram, Facebook (parts of their app), Bloomberg, & Skype (

From a technical perspective, it wins some points because it uses technology many developers already know: Javascript and React. Web developers don’t have to learn an entirely new language (Objective C, Swift, or Java); they just apply the skills they already have to a new form factor, mobile.

So how did the app come out? Speakeasy is snappy, responsive, and I bet you couldn’t tell it’s a React Native app.

React Native strikes the perfect balance in creating cross-platform apps because it’s super fast to build them and the apps look 

 feel like native mobile apps. The end result is a polished, snappy and responsive mobile app.

You write the apps in Javascript, which is one of the most popular programming languages and use the React framework which is a revolutionary and brilliant framework.

React Native isn’t great for games or anything with complex animations. But for most apps that simply display and let you edit data, it’s a great choice.

React Native is a great choice for 80% of the apps out there.

I envisioned a mobile app development company that takes a radically different approach to building apps.

How We Create Beautiful Mobile Apps in Half the Time

Here’s the story of why I created Foxbox Digital, a different kind of mobile app development company.

 we needed to build a mobile app to complement our existing web app. We were a team of web developers and didn’t have experience building iOS or Android apps. We reached out to some local app development companies in Chicago to get quotes on what it would take to build the app. The quotes were really high, and that was for 

. And after that, we’d need to have them build the Android app too.

We’re responsible for hosting and supporting the API that actually runs the app. We ended up finding a freelance iOS developer to build the app, and he did a killer job. It cost a ton of money though, and at the end of the day we could only support half our users because the other half were on Android.

 I understand why mobile app development companies charge so much for a mobile app — developers are expensive, and in-demand. But isn’t there a better way?

, Ionic, and Cordova. Ionic and Cordova apps look like native mobile apps, but they don’t feel like them — they’re slow and sluggish. React Native strikes the perfect balance because they’re fast to build, and the apps look and feel like native mobile apps (snappy and responsive). And it’s simply a joy to program the code. 

With a cross-platform framework like React Native, we build both the iOS app and the Android app at the same time. 

This cuts the development time (and cost) in half

Through our engagement with Home Chef, we developed and published both iOS and Android apps using React Native.

This helped them significantly increase app store ratings, meal kit conversions, and user engagement rates. 

The mobile app is only part of the solution though — every mobile app needs an API to power the app. An API is the server and software that the app communicates with in order to do what it needs to do (i.e. get and store data). Once you have an API built, you need to host and maintain it. As a client, do you want to be bothered to maintain an API?

I thought about all of the things that you need to do in order to keep your app up and running in the app stores.

Mobile App — build it, launch it, maintain it (fix bugs and security issues).

API — build it, build servers to host it, maintain it.

Monitor the API to ensure it stays running and respond to issues as they come up.

Upgrade the mobile app every time Apple or Google releases a new phone or operating system. Re-release to both app stores.

Do clients really want to do all of this?

react native

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