Every year a few hundred thousand graduate and postgraduate doctors compete for a limited number of speciality and super speciality courses in India’s prestigious medical institutions, where the number of applicants far outnumbers the available seats. This year alone, an estimated two lakh aspirants attended the National Eligibility Entrance Test for Postgraduates (NEET PG) in a bid to secure one of 43,000+ seats, while around 15,000 postgraduates attempted to crack NEET SS (Super Specialty) for a little more than 5000 seats!

Against this backdrop, coaching centers and training institutions in India have their work cut out in helping aspirants reach the desired percentile to land the course of their choice. Hence, there is a need for such companies to invest in ways that would transform the way knowledge is delivered and consumed by students in the country. Leveraging the latest digital technologies, these companies can accelerate the skilling of India’s workforce by making content easily accessible, more affordable and improving learning modules.

A unique approach to coaching programs
A Hyderabad-based startup, DocTutorials Edutech is one such organisation that started its journey in 2020 and has quickly made a mark in the industry for its innovative approach to training medical students for graduate and postgraduate medical exams. However, as they grew in reach and size, they soon realized that they needed to digitize to stand out amongst peers and cater to the growing demand for medical entrance training.

DocTutorials Edutech facilitates learning using a med-tech platform that delivers tons of video content, expert notes, faculty interactions, and an exhaustive question bank that allows students to apply their knowledge to real-life cases.

Speaking about their programs, Venkata Kondaveeti, Tech Lead, DocTutorials Edutech, says, “We have a team of medical practitioners and academicians with a wealth of knowledge and experience who provide the best resources for students.”

As the popularity of their content grew among medical students, the limitations of the existing platform became more apparent. Additional functionalities had to be incorporated quickly so that all interactions like registration, payments, access to sessions and other content, were simplified and more efficient.

The reliability, scalability, and availability of applications were yet other aspects with the potential to affect a student’s experience. Consequently, the company had to ensure its applications could handle higher workloads and respond to requests faster.

The platform’s performance was also closely tied to how video content was delivered, especially since DocTutorials’ wealth of video content was one of its unique selling propositions. With more students on board, the company needed to ensure that each one had access to the video content they had signed up for while at the same time protecting content from any potential misuse.

Venkata Kondaveeti adds, “We concluded that to expand, we needed 100+ new public APIs that would help us manage the volume of applications coming in and deliver content seamlessly to all our students.”

After careful consideration of all available solutions, the search concluded with IBM.

DocTutorials Edutech sought a solution from IBM's broad cloud portfolio and chose IBM App Connect, an industry-leading SaaS integration solution from IBM Cloud Pak for Integration. “App Connect came prebuilt with hundreds of connectors to various databases, which caught our attention,” explains Venkata Kondaveeti on why App Connect was chosen.

“The benefit of having prebuilt connectors and templates for a wide range of commonly used SaaS applications is that organizations can quickly design integration flows using these prebuilt patterns, connectors, and APIs, and derive value from day one,” says Geeta Gurnani, IBM Technology CTO & Technical Sales Leader, IBM India & South Asia.

The simple no-code interface made it easier to set up integration flows with a few drag-and-drop motions. Once the integration flows were in place, the team could focus on building and deploying APIs on App Connect. "Having AI-powered mapping assistance and data transformation capabilities as part of the solution was a boon for us as it reduced development time and potential errors. We also had the added advantage of deploying on any on-premise location, cloud, or AWS,” explains Venkata Kondaveeti.

Scaling up to meet newer demands
Adopting this unique approach to integration ensured that the development of APIs was completed within six months. The APIs were then quickly tested, reducing the time needed to get to market with the changes. Using the global cache in App Connect, the speed and responsiveness of applications also saw a vast improvement, as DocTutorials could cache relevant user data and avoid repeated calls to applications.

Now students can be quickly onboarded onto the med-tech platform, access question papers through multiple channels, receive timely updates, and stream video tutorials using s3 APIs. App Connect also helped create custom security and privacy measures that gave them better control over s3 links which is unique.

The solution is currently deployed on AWS EC2 and is transforming how the company engages with students. Venkata Kondaveeti points out, “We can run a question and answer session and correct it online at the same time.” The development time has reduced by 25% while the uptime of APIs has increased by 30%, giving students a consistent service experience. With a seamless omni-channel experience and the ability to deliver content quickly with low-cost connectivity, DocTutorials Edutech is well poised to outshine its peers.

To know more about IBM App Connect visit here.