Award · 2024
Australia Good Design Award
Category winner in the 2024 Australia Good Design Awards for the drtalk dental communication and collaboration platform.
Digital and Interface categorygood-design.org
Six years, one product.
A first-to-market communication, collaboration and education platform for dental and medical communities in the United States. Designed, built and supported end to end by a ring-fenced Donnish team since the original app was conceived.
- 6+ years
- Ring-fence team, fixed budget
- Thousands
- High-value users
- 2024
- Australia Good Design Award
What is drtalk?
drtalk is a first-to-market communication, collaboration and education platform serving dental and medical communities in the USA. Its primary purpose is to build communities through secure digital channels, both at the organisation (practice) level and the individual practitioner level. With the ability to connect validated professionals, drtalk removes boundaries and redundant processes, and brings a digital-native experience to the desktop of the practice through its rich web interface, and into the hands of the practitioner through its native mobile apps.
This benefits all stakeholders in the ecosystem: direct, ubiquitous and instant communication, secure validated connection, simplified and intelligent referral management, and the ability to consume high-value education on the go and earn Continuous Education credits.
Now a mature scale-up offering, drtalk runs in Azure on a modern backend-for-front-end modular architecture using microservices and event-driven design, prepared for scale and performance as the platform continues to grow its thousands of high-value users.
The kind of platform we build and run.
A genericised view of the production platform behind drtalk: native and web clients, a modular .NET service layer, a private Azure cloud, and the third-party services that carry payments, messaging, identity and media. The same shape carries any client.
- Request / data flow
- Owned service
- Third-party tiles link out
01, Client apps
Every surface a user, admin or partner touches.
- Web app
- Next.js
- i
OS - React Native
- Android
- React Native
- Admin portal
- Blazor
- Signup app
- Blazor
- Companion app
- Blazor
- Marketing site
- WordPress
- Custom integrations
- Partner apps · API
- HTTPS / REST
02, Edge & API
Edge protection, then backend-for-frontend.
Edge
- Cloudflare
- CDN · WAF
API layer
- Core API
- .NET 8 · REST
- Realtime & chat API
- .NET 8 · REST
- Private network
03, Services
Modular .NET services. Event-driven, CQRS.
- Storage service
- .NET 8
- Caching service
- .NET 8
- Notifications service
- .NET 8
- Reporting service
- .NET 8
Notification hubs
- Signal
R - Azure · live collab
- Push
- Expo
- Data / integrations
04, Cloud platform
A private Azure cloud.
Azure · private cloud- Cosmos DB
- Primary
- Cosmos DB
- Chat
- Key Vault
- Secrets
- Blob storage
- Files
- Queues
- Service bus
- Table storage
- Key-value
- Signal
R - Realtime
- Functions
- Serverless
- Search
- Index
- App Insights
- Telemetry
- Defender
- Security
- Azure Open
AI - GPT models
- Postgres
- Logs only
- Entra ID
- Identity
- Aggregated
06, Reporting
BI on the platform's own data.
- Power BI
- Dashboards
Architecture pattern · Event-driven + CQRS
- Command
- Write model · .NET
- Azure Service Bus · domain events
- Projections
- Read model · Cosmos DB
- Query
Writes and reads are split: commands mutate the write model, domain events flow over Azure Service Bus, and read models stay eventually consistent, so heavy query load never blocks writes.
Genericised from a live six-year production platform
A true partnership. Not a vendor relationship.
Our team has been involved with drtalk since the inception of the original communication app, more than six years ago. We provide design, project management, business analysis, development and quality assurance through a dedicated ring-fenced team. We also sit alongside the founders in product strategy, ideation, co-creation, roadmap and delivery.
drtalk was founded by two highly regarded dental specialists who provide market and user insight, serve as the final authority on roadmap and priority decisions, and own the budget. Everything else, from platform setup, administration and maintenance, to detailed UX and UI design, development team management and resourcing, deployment, release and support, is managed by the ring-fenced Donnish team.
We deliver using a dual-track agile model: just enough of the product is designed and approved by the customer to keep the development team moving. This gives the client huge flexibility and keeps them in control of what the team is doing. Open Jira boards and backlogs make the work visible and queryable at any time.
There is no area of the product we have not helped design, build, and support.
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The team
A dual-track agile delivery team built for ownership and accountability. Independent thinkers with T-shaped skills. No-one wears only one hat. Today they build with Claude Code for engineering, refactoring and tests, and design in Figma alongside it.
- Product strategyBrisbane
- Product and Project ManagementPerth
- Lead Business Analyst / QASydney
- Design LeadSydney
- Tech Lead, backendSydney
- Senior React developerBrisbane
- Senior backend, Azure and integrationManila
- Front end (ReactJS, React Native, .NET)Manila
- React Native developerManila
- Quality AssuranceManila
The technology
Hosted entirely in Azure. Modern backend-for-front-end with microservices and event-driven design. Touch points across web, mobile and admin.
Platform · Azure
- Azure Service Bus
- Cosmos DB
- Defender
- Power BI
- Key Vault
- Azure Queue
- Azure Functions
- Entra
Touch points
- Web · ReactJS with Node
- Mobile · React Native (Expo)
- Admin portal · Blazor
- Integration · C# on .NET 8
Integrations
- Persona · identity validation
- Stripe + Stripe Connect · payments, subscriptions, payout
- SignalR · real-time collaboration
- Documo · e-fax
- SendGrid + Twilio · messaging
- Giphy
- MUX · video streaming
Recognition. And quiet wins.
Engineering · 30% saving
Xamarin and WPF to React. In one pass.
Successfully migrated the entire Xamarin mobile app and WPF desktop application to React Native and ReactJS, creating a reusable component layer that saved more than 30% of duplicate feature development going forward.
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