As we work relentlessly on the evolution of PPS, it is not without forethought that we forge our path into the 21st century and beyond.
During our latest project, the team here at PPS have done a lot of reflecting, not only on our PPS journey but also on the origins of private practice. We found ourselves asking questions such as where did it all start? What continues to drive this industry forward? And, most importantly, what do our practitioners need in order to continue to thrive and succeed?
So, we went back to the beginning and looked at the history of podiatry, coming across origins of practice thought to be as early as 2400 BC, in ancient Egypt evidence of this can be found forever immortalised in the walls of the tomb of Ankhmahor. We found physiotherapy can be traced as far back as 460 BC with the likes of Hippocrates and later Galen, both of whom advocated massage, manual therapy and hydrotherapy. The 1800’s saw the inception of therapies such as osteopathy, chiropractic treatment and psychology, but what became most apparent in the midst of our research, was the ever-increasing indoctrination of such treatments into everyday life.
Significant events throughout history have continued to provide the necessity for such practice. Physiotherapy became a real mainstay in society when nurses were recruited to exercise soldiers during World War I and podiatry has been famously employed throughout history by the likes of Napoleon and Abraham Lincoln.
What we can take from this, is that the private practice industry has continued to grow over thousands of years and can only continue to develop over time as we progress and improve our knowledge of the human body.
You may think that as software developers, we don’t put too much thought into the mechanics of each individual practice. But without a good level of understanding and empathy for each of the disciplines that we work with, we wouldn’t be the UK’s market leaders in private practice software.
In late 2016 we began working on a brand-new project which is set to refresh and rejuvenate our core product; PPS.
Much like the therapies that have withstood the test of time, we realised that the reason PPS has continued to be such a success is simply because it works. The flexibility, simplicity and comprehensibility of PPS have led to a strong and healthy user base which increases every day. So, when we tried to think of a way of going ‘back to the drawing board’ we concluded that we didn’t need to. As we researched our history and reworked our plans the latest version of PPS was born, and rather than trying to reinvent the wheel we have been working on improving it.
Over the next few months, we will slowly be revealing some of the key aspects of our latest project; you won’t see lots of brand-new fancy gimmicks or superficial features, but what you will see is the logical evolution of a software built on a deep understanding of the needs of our practitioners. We have made some design changes and in doing so we have also had the chance to reassess the logistics of PPS, how the features work for our practitioners, and how our practitioners work with the features.
We will be offering a select group of PPS users the chance to test things out and give us their feedback, this is an essential part of our process and not only will we be looking to pick up any teething problems but we want to include our clients in our decision making too, so it will be an opportunity to catch a glimpse of never before seen layouts and designs.
If you think that you would like to be involved in our product testing phase then please keep an eye out for our emails, over the next few weeks we will be offering up even more information and the chance to get on-board.
