Genome Medical (GeneMatters)
A genetic consulting company helping people understand their genetic risks and guiding them in their healthcare journey.
The company is known for the quality and efficiency of its cancer pre-screening services.
Features
The software was originally created for genetic counselors to assist them in their daily work, such as:
- Managing patient records
- Managing scheduled appointments
- Appointments as VoIP calls
- Writing patient reports
Over time, we started supporting:
- 3rd party health institution integrations
- Video calls
- Automated cancer pre-screening
Roles & Responsibilities
Finding solutions, starting from case study up until implementation and writing tests. Working in "vertical slices”: one engineer completes everything related to the specific task.
The project's structure demanded a versatile skillset from each engineer. Everyone was expected to be confident across the entire codebase, a principle reflected in our code reviews: You only approved a pull request if you were prepared to work on that code in the future.
- Write case studies if necessary
- Demonstrate the proof of concept
- Implement the solution
- Implement and maintain test coverage
- Configure Bitbucket pipelines for all kinds of QA tasks
- Write manual E2E tests
- Perform manual tests upon release
Development & Used Technologies
The project follows agile development with scrum methodology. We have 2‑week sprints, daily standups, sprint planning, sprint review, and sprint retrospective meetings.
We worked in an international team covering a wide‑range of time‑zones.
- Docker & docker-compose
- SQL
- React
- JavaScript / TypeScript
- Bitbucket & pipelines
- Acuity API for appointment scheduling
- Twilio API for VoIP calls & video
- Selenium / Cypress for automated E2E tests
Takeaways
Every hour spent on database structure planning is worth it. On the overall lifecycle of the project weeks or months of work can be saved.
I started working on this project when it was a startup with 3 developers. In 5 years, the company grew, management changed, and it was acquired by Genome Medical. We transitioned into a big‑company environment. Experiencing this lifecycle gave me a lot of insights.
I learned a lot about predicting workloads. This knowledge is useful in every aspect of my life, from coding to cooking and beyond.
This job truly taught us engineering. From case studies, through planning and implementation, to writing tests, we understood the cost of every decision we made.