.jpg)
Juvare is a worldwide leader in emergency preparedness and critical incident management and response technology connecting over 80% of state public health agencies, 3,500+ hospitals, 50+ federal agencies, and 500+ emergency management operations across the greater U.S., as well as a rapidly expanding international presence. Juvare solutions empower government agencies, corporations, healthcare facilities, academic institutions, and volunteer organizations to leverage real-time data in managing incidents faster and more efficiently, while simultaneously protecting people, property, and brands.
Challenge: Unlock seamless collaboration across jurisdictional and disciplinary boundaries
In today's fast-paced and interconnected world, organizations’ ability to communicate and share information efficiently is more critical than ever. This is especially true for managing daily operations and responding to significant events that require coordination among multiple stakeholders. This could include: tracking medications for hospitals facing health crises, evacuating communities affected by natural disasters, responding to active shooter incidents, adequately addressing pandemics, or conducting daily system checks of a nuclear reactor.
Effective emergency preparedness and response initiatives necessitate extensive collaboration across various jurisdictional and disciplinary boundaries. However, overcoming these boundaries can be challenging without granting external stakeholders access to confidential internal systems, or developing complex workarounds that involve logging into multiple unrelated platforms.
Juvare's team, guided by valuable insights from extensive client research, identified that their solutions would greatly benefit from a chat-based user experience — delivering the required convenience demanded by crisis scenarios.
The addition of the embedded chat component and its advanced features would also serve as a market expansion opportunity for the business, positioned as a complement to the company's previously established solutions like WebEOC®, EMResource®, EMTrack®, and Juvare Unified Command Platform™ (UCP).
Offering a modern embedded Chat option for our clients provides real-time collaboration, improved user experience, proactive problem solving, and enhanced situational awareness. Crisis communication is critical, so providing faster response and easy access to internal and partner resources is a great value-add for those who use our products.
Solution: Choosing to buy instead of build secure chat
The company already had an internally developed integrated chat within the products, but its maintenance was cumbersome and the tool lacked advanced features. The initial decision to be made was whether the new solution to be launched would be fully developed internally or built upon an existing chat engine.
Capitalizing on Rocket.Chat’s experience and expertise allowed Juvare to customize our existing chat engine to meet our needs, without having to recreate the wheel. Rocket.Chat’s software enables us to focus our energy on what we do best, while using a product that is highly scalable and market proven and true.
Once the decision was made to buy instead of build, three key requirements for the chosen solution were defined:
1. On-premises deployment
Regardless of the selected engine, it was essential to offer the possibility of a self-managed deployment inside Juvare’s cloud infrastructure. Given that Juvare serves clients in heavily regulated industries, the chat solution could not rely on external storage or processing, especially due to the laws around data transmission outside a client's country of origin or specific required compliance frameworks.
Furthermore, emergency communication also potentially involves sensitive and confidential information, and special security accreditations and audits are required before the software.
2. Security centric extensive capabilities
Capabilities such as secure media and file sharing in various formats, and granular access control were among the advanced requirements that the chat engine needed to provide to meet the business needs.
These functionalities facilitate easier messaging and information exchange among selected partners, irrespective of their location or sector. Emergency managers could use the platform to remain connected with counterparts in other jurisdictions, while healthcare organizations could send real-time updates and documents to public health authorities.
3. Scalability
During an ongoing emergency, the number of users and data volume can increase rapidly. It was essential for the chosen engine to have the appropriate architecture and proven experience in supporting such operations, with dynamic scalability capabilities.
Considering the above criteria, Rocket.Chat stood out as the ideal choice to support Juvare's next innovative move.
Rocket.Chat’s flexible deployment model allows Juvare to deploy across the various geographical and technical regions that we operate in ensuring compliance with our client’s data residency and system security requirements.
Results: Accelerating market entry and supporting community safety
This enabled Juvare to accelerate its time-to-market by approximately six months and rapidly launch JX Collaborate - Secure interorganizational messaging and file sharing for the Juvare Community.
In addition to saving time and money, the solution has delivered significant social value by enabling the exchange of important insights within the community; not only during crisis moments but more importantly as a crucial tool for preventing or preparing for them.
