Case Studies

Telemedicine, using technology to bring doctors and patients together efficiently over distance, is a rapidly growing field. Since 2008, Saturn Systems has provided core software development and quality assurance services to industry leaders. Our projects range from medical device communications and integration, to online calendar management. Saturn Systems’ unique skills mix of device control and enterprise application development are the perfect fit for the industry.

Saturn Systems has provided staff augmentation to a leading company in the retirement planning solutions industry since 2007. With staff ranging from business analysts to .NET developers and SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) experts, Saturn Systems has provided top technical expertise, competitive Rural Outsourcing rates and the flexible staff levels the customer needs.

The Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED) contracted Saturn Systems to design and develop an enterprise suite of applications to track attendance and service usage at 49 Workforce Centers across the state. Saturn Systems worked closely with DEED stakeholders, carefully designing the Customer Registration System (CRS) to meet the needs of a diverse clientele - Workforce Center operators, DEED management, and agency sponsors. The resulting solution required a variety of technologies, including: desktop applications, web services, online administration, ID card printing, bar code scanning and complex reporting. The application is used on a daily basis on more than 500 workstations in WorkForce Centers around Minnesota.

Saturn Systems was contracted to design and develop a web solution to provide fundraising services to non-profit organizations and their event participants. The purpose of the system was to allow online registration for charitable events, and offer a user-friendly, yet versatile means for fundraisers to create a personalized web site for collecting and reporting ongoing donations. To do this effectively, the system had to allow for quick and easy fundraiser registration and dynamic personalized web site, while preserving consistent organization branding. Integration with existing payment transaction software and an online and desktop fundraising tracking application were also key requirements. The resulting system was built and deployed successfully and has been instrumental in raising tens of millions of dollars for charity purposes.

A nationwide printer of newspapers, inserts and catalogs contacted Saturn Systems to replace an online portal used by chain retail advertising customers to design and customize weekly inserts. The system to be replaced was a heavyweight Java application with client PC and bandwidth requirements that frequently exceeded those of their customer base. Saturn Systems designed a new lightweight, purely web-based solution that supported online markup and annotation, page additions using approved templates and prototype generation. Significant back-end enhancements were made, adding workflow to ensure advertiser edits were routed, approved and processed. The resulting system has significantly simplified the weekly process of design, approval and publishing advertising circulars for Saturn’s customer and their advertising customers.

Saturn Systems took over support and enhancement of a complex system of web services and batch processes used by a non-profit that works with troubled mortgage owners to stay in their home. The system is continually being enhanced to add services, address new regulations and integrate with agencies and providers. The systems were developed by the previous vendor which used a hybrid onshore/offshore model. Saturn Systems was able to step in and deliver the necessary technical expertise and staffing at a lower cost than the previous vendor.

A regional provider of chemical dependency services contracted with Saturn Systems to provide support and enhancement of an existing web based secure forms solution used for tracking of all patient information and case activity. The site uses IBM Forms technology, formerly PureEdge, to accept information and integrate with attached smartcard readers to verify electronic signatures of staff and patients. The original system was developed using Microsoft Classic ASP which had become difficult to support. Saturn Systems redesigned the system to use ASP.NET and improved the usability of the interface. The resulting system has greatly simplified maintenance and reduced development costs.

A national chain of clothing stores with more than 700 outlets contracted Saturn Systems to create a web-based Customer Relationship Management (CRM) application for use by all of their stores. The resulting application integrated with the point of sales (POS) system and allowed store staff to survey customers at the time of purchase. The design required support for multiple store brands, and each retail chain required its own unique survey form containing questions designed by the chain’s marketing staff. The application is widely used to collect tens of thousands of names, addresses, birthdays and personalized notes on customers, which are used to mail promotional materials and by store managers to contact individual customers regarding special sales and new merchandise.

Saturn Systems was contracted to design and develop a comprehensive case management solution for a provider of care, education, and treatment for children with emotional, behavioral, and learning disabilities. To prepare for the design phase Saturn Systems performed a complete analysis of all the major business and treatment entities within the organization. The result was a system designed to meet a wide variety of very detailed needs yet provide a straightforward interface usable by users of varying skill levels. The system has been a success for the customer and has greatly simplified life for their users, allowing them to focus on their jobs.

Saturn Systems was a contracted by a major auto parts supplier to enhance a legacy software system used to run several distribution centers. The software was originally developed in C and the exact version of source currently in production was unclear. Saturn engineers combed through a mix of source archives, including extraction from a crashed hard drive, to develop a base version that matched all existing functionality. From that source base a buildable modern environment was created and a variety of new features, including wireless printers and new scanner functionality, were added and deployed.

Electronic blood glucose meters are used by diabetics to accurately track blood sugar levels. They are used by doctors in telemedicine to track a patient’s daily and long term ability to manage these levels. Available meters communicate with a PC using either serial or USB communications. Saturn Systems has developed and integrated drivers for a number of these devices, each of which has a unique communications protocol.

In the process of upgrading the audio conferencing features of their flagship product from Windows XP to Windows 7, one of Saturn Systems telemedicine clients discovered that support for acoustic echo cancellation (AEC) was no long supported in the Microsoft Real-Time Communications libraries. Saturn Systems engineers were asked to replace the system with a custom solution and a new audio codec. Using Microsoft’s Media Foundation technology, a replacement was developed that included the necessary loopback functionality required for echo cancellation. The resulting component provided better quality audio and efficiency than the original solution and was integrated with the core product successfully.

Saturn Systems engineers integrated a Bluetooth compatible medical device, in this case a bathroom scale, with an existing telemedicine platform. Integrating new Bluetooth devices with the platform in the future will be a matter of developing the necessary driver code to communicate with the device using its protocol and plugging that into the newly developed Bluetooth infrastructure.

This case study provides a good example of a small project that made a big difference for a customer. A brick and mortar lighting business branching into e-commerce had a cumbersome process of receiving and appropriately processing thousands of images of vendor products for display on their web site. Each image could arrive in a variety of formats and had to be cleanly processed into various resolutions and placed in appropriate folders. Recognizing the project as fairly straightforward, Saturn Systems assigned it to the intern staff in order to keep costs low. The resulting application was one that anyone on the customer staff could now run without needing great technical skills. The owner’s comments on completion were, “Everybody is happy with your product, we love your work!”

Saturn Systems took over support and enhancement of a vendor management portal used by the financial industry when the customer’s previous vendor decided to end support for the package. The original designer of the solution had used Microsoft’s MVC along with a considerable palette of open source utilities and packages. Transition of the complex package occurred with little support from the previous vendor, requiring Saturn staff to quickly gain an understanding of the system architecture and an intricate deployment process. Saturn Systems continues to support and enhance the site.

Saturn Systems was contracted to develop a C# .NET based driver to communicate with an ANSI 12.19 compliant smart meter over general packet radio service (GPRS). The resulting driver had to be integrated with an existing parser to produce readable data for inclusion in a database. The project required our engineer to quickly understand the depth and complexities of the ANSI 12.19 protocol as well as an undocumented custom parser module. The project resulted in a robust, object-oriented driver framework and common data link layer that supported protocol enhancement and meter specifics. The parser code was also abstracted to support generic 12.19 parsing as well as the easy addition of meter specific data parsing. All code was developed and tested using a custom driver application used to exercise all features and functions supported by the driver.

Saturn Systems was contracted by a customer to upgrade the software control system for a high technology sewer inspection system. This suitcase based system is used by drain cleaning professionals and features a remotely operated video camera controlled by software that runs on a customized laptop. The application records video, operator audio, and distance travelled by the inspection camera. Saturn engineers added several new features, upgraded the system for Windows 7, and integrated several disparate third party video capture and production components into a single package, saving the client thousands of dollars in annual licensing fees.

Saturn Systems was part of a team that developed an end to end solution which converted and migrated over one million legacy time and attendance records into the SAP based Navy ERP System. Project requirements established zero tolerance for conversion errors, which necessitated the development of an elaborate array of reconciliation software and processes. This large scale conversion effort involved a core management team of four persons, and ten NAVSEA sites located throughout the continental United States. In addition to developing the core conversion software, Saturn engineers created sophisticated reporting mechanisms to ensure the conversions were 100% accurate. All code was fully unit tested and system tested through a series of mock conversions before the final conversion was performed. Through extreme attention to detail and a focus on continuous process improvement over a period of eight months, the final conversion effort of over 1 million records was executed with 100% accuracy.

Saturns Systems has deployed skilled field operatives to the Afghanistan theater to support the Intelligence Analysis System (IAS) Family of Systems (FoS) field installations in Forward Operation Bases. IAS uses a three-tiered approach for receiving, parsing, analyzing, and disseminating fused all-source intelligence data. The first tier, the Marine Expeditionary Force (MEF) IAS, is a mobile system that supports the MEF Command Element. The second tier, the Intelligence Operations Server (IOS), is a team portable system designed to support the Intelligence Operations of the Major Subordinate Commands (MSC). The third tier, the Intelligence Operations Work-station (IOW), serves as the intelligence link for the battalion and squadron commands to higher headquarters. Fielding of the MEF IAS has provided Marine Air Ground Task Force commanders with a mobile, all-source, intelligence data fusion and dissemination capability. Saturn engineers provided laboratory and field support for IAS FoS and Marinelink systems including: training for the IAS software suite, with a concentration on MarineLink, map data for FalconView/C2PC, repair and re-install of corrupted or damaged systems, MarineLink SharePoint site maintenance and country-wide replication of IAS installations.

Saturn assumed a leadership and architecture role for the SPAWAR Enterprise Managed Services (EMS) application which is an e-commerce application that makes it easy for users to order and manage their critical telecom IT assets, while providing sophisticated financial and workflow controls to implement government mandated processes. The EMS application implements a tiered architecture using Java Server Pages (JSP) and Java Struts framework. The solution used BEA WebLogic Server as the application server and Oracle 9i as the database. Business layer components were created using Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB). Saturn's leadership and enterprise design skills made this project a great success.

The Electronic Security Systems Integrated Management System (ESSIMS) application is a large scale enterprise web development initiative sponsored by SPAWAR code 743, responsible for providing physical security for Marine Corp bases throughout the world. ESSIMS is a powerful and intuitive web based project management tool that allows project engineers, program managers and USMC sponsors and site managers to manage USMC Physical Security projects. Users are able to track and manage project finances, milestones, documentation, tasking and problem reports. Saturn Systems leads a group of software engineers for this project and is responsible for project management, requirements gathering, software design and quality assurance.

The Dismounted-Data Automated Communications Terminal (D-DACT), a hand held Windows Mobile device provides Marines, platoon leaders and their commanders with an accurate view of the battlefield allowing them sharpen their decisions and decrease response times. Saturn engineers were responsible for training new integration engineers, integrating and testing new hardware and software releases, updating all Blue Force Situational Awareness (BFSA) documentation related to software releases, directly supporting decision processes on issues regarding BFSA software, creating white papers and reports that assisted the BFSA project office in the decision making process, assisting in test events within BFSA scope of work, and performing demonstrations of BFSA system architecture.

Saturn Systems was contracted to develop an Android tablet application for use in a trade show setting. This application provided an interactive interface allowing users to learn about products and services alongside various informational videos by answering questions about their needs. The project had to be completed in a very short time frame, the application was delivered on time and within budget. The customer’s feedback was, “Thank you so much for your help during this short time frame and your developer was an absolute pleasure to work with!”