Cubex Integration

Overview

Cubex is a company that provides multiple solutions for Veterinarians and Clinical staff when operating day-to-day practices. One of the solutions that many practitioners from veterinary clinic chains and hospitals in North America are currently using is DEA* compliant smart cabinets with their integrated cloud-based software. The solution is suitable for storing narcotics, controlled substances, and pharmacy items which must be handled in accordance with regulations.

(*) DEA stands for Drug Enforcement Administration. As working on a PMS (Practice Management Software) for my current company, providing a solution for clients who use Cubex cabinets alongside our company’s product is very critical to save clients’ time by making the two software speak to each other.

The main functionalities of Cubex are helping automate tracking medicine usage besides keeping an accurate and real-time count of inventory levels for the items that the smart cabinet contains. Meanwhile, our company’s product (Provet) supports users in performing relevant clinical activities such as prescribing, dispensing, and inventorying all items used in the clinic including items stored in the Cubex cabinet.

The goal of this project is to create an integration that helps Provet to recognize Cubex cabinets’ IDs and map them to the right department within Provet. After the connection is established and configured, the service will support matching items data and users data between the two software. The deliverables of the project narrowed down to two key points at the start:
1. Establish a connection between Provet and Cubex
2. Map items and users from the two software databases

This project is currently in the pilot and developed with so many other functionalities to suit types of items and tighten up its security level when dispensing requests made till fulfilled. However, in this case, I only focus on the initial design challenges when this project began and only explain the design process of the two initial expected deliverables as stated above.

User stories

• As a veterinarian, while I’m responsible for an open consultation in PC, I can create prescriptions with items from a Cubex cabinet. Cubex should recognize this request and it should transfer those items to a new state as “ready to dispense”.

• As a veterinarian, I want to minimize labor-intensive tasks and one of them is managing inventory, especially for narcotic products to make sure regulatory compliance is strictly aware of and followed.

• In emergency cases, products are taken out from Cubex without a request from a consultation initiated. These “orphan” items should be notified to Provet, so that later on the user who took the products can assign them to the correct consultation.

Early exploration

• In current Provet software, there was already an integration sub-menu in the settings, which gathers all external services/integrations enabling users to turn on certain integrations like add-ons.

• Having this Cubex integration within PC is a competitive advantage compared to other alternative PMS in the market.

• I talk with the lead engineer of this project to discover how the back-end was expected to work to sync to how the feature looks and behaves while the user interacts with it.

• Provet is going to adopt design guidelines from Nord - our company’s design system, so using the new style guide is needed to later achieve consistency.

My learnings

• Checking in regularly with the engineer is very important to make sure the direction of the UI solution resonates with the technical process.

• Consolidate industry knowledge regarding narcotics management.

• Users can pass Cubex security in case it’s an emergency, therefore, “orphan” items must be recorded for later connecting the items to the right consultations.