Irish startup, Webdoctor, looks to expand.

Ubuntu and Ruby on Rails on Azure are just what the doctor ordered.

Webdoctor uses Azure's compatibility with open source software Ubuntu and Ruby on Rails to bring the fastest medical consultations to Ireland.

Webdoctor.ie is revolutionizing medical consultation and treatment throughout Ireland with their safe and affordable online doctor and prescription delivery service. “We are an online doctor service, treating patients across Ireland. In addition, we also offer a concierge style service for corporate customers. Our plan is to expand and start treating patients throughout more of the European market this year, adding more doctors and additional kinds of healthcare as we grow”, says CEO Oisin Kim.

Dr. Audrey Diffley and Dr. Sylvester Mooney, Clinical Director and Founders

A Microsoft BizSpark member, Webdoctor was recently awarded “Best Startup” at the Irish Internet Association Awards- the top honor for startups in Irish technology. The company is delighted with their achievement says Kim, “We consider ourselves a real Microsoft BizSpark success story. We are eternally grateful to Microsoft Ireland, they have been a big supporter and have provided invaluable advice to Webdoctor as we have scaled our business. It has been refreshing to work with people who care so much about us.” The Webdoctor team’s previous successes working with fortune 500 companies, on multi-billion dollar a year websites and application platforms, have allowed them to introduce unmatched experience to the online doctor platform, culminating in their big win at the Irish Internet Association Awards.

Webdoctor provides prospective patients with three different kinds of medical service, seven days a week– at home testing, at-home patient-doctor video consultations, and Smartform questionnaires. Smartform questionnaires are detailed questionnaires built with business logic and rules that dynamically add questions based on the patient’s prior responses, allowing the company’s doctors to review patient questions, make a diagnosis, and determine if it is safe to distribute prescription(s) - faster and safer than ever!

With a multi-tier architecture developed on Azure, Webdoctor’s decision to rely on Azure technologies was based on its reputation for dependability says Kim, “Azure’s reliability and availability are exceptional. We have only experienced greater than 99.99% availability in the past year. The reliability is just exceptional.” Webdoctor utilizes multiple Azure technologies including Virtual Machines, Cloud Services, Storage, and Virtual Networks. Azure’s Virtual Networks allows Webdoctor to secure their connections, create an isolated and secure environment, and create sophisticated network topologies using virtual appliances.

Webdoctor is newcomer to the Azure platform, “This is not our first startup, we were asked to give Azure a chance as we launched Webdoctor. We went with Azure and found that its reliability enabled us to provide outstanding availability to our patients. We see rock solid stability with Azure. Our average page response time is under 4 seconds, with in some cases quite heavy pages containing a lot of data and information. Azure provides us with sub-second performance on detailed complex searches over millions of data points” says Kim.

Azure’s compatibility with a wide range of open source software technology also made it the obvious choice for this award winning startup, explains Kim. “We are a completely open source house aside from our iOS application and Azure works well with all of our open source technologies.” Webdoctor employs a wide range of open source software in aggregation with Azure including Ubuntu, Nginx, Ruby on Rails, Phusion Passenger, and MySQL. “Our platform is built on Azure and we are running Ubuntu for stability, security, and performance. We chose to aggregate Ruby on Rails with Azure for its speedy development and deployment capabilities. It was surprising just how well Azure works with Ruby on Rails and in our view, nothing is better for developer friendliness.”

Webdoctor is defying the startup odds with their incredible product, hard work, and cultivated business partnerships. According to Kim, “We are proud to be part of BizSpark here in Ireland. The fact that we’re running mainly on Azure, instead of competing cloud, makes us kind of the black sheep among the startup community in Ireland, but it is a real advantage for us and we continue to champion Azure with other Irish companies. I think they are starting to take notice.”

View Webdoctor video here.

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Microsoft is helping these startups succeed through its BizSpark program. To join or see other startup stories, visit us at our website here. To listen to our startups, check out these podcasts on devradio here. 

About BizSpark: Microsoft BizSpark is a global program that helps startups succeed by giving free access to Microsoft Azure cloud services, software and support. BizSpark members receive up to $750 per month of free Microsoft Azure cloud services for 3 years: that’s $150 per month each for up to 5 developers. Azure works with Linux and open-source technologies such as Ruby, Python, Java and PHP. BizSpark is available to startups that are privately held, less than 5-years-old and earn less than $1M in annual revenue.