Redeveloping a Critical Industry Resource for Mobile Use Across iOS & Android
Client: Animal and Plant Health Association (APHA)
Industry: Veterinary Medicine, Agriculture, Animal Health
Services: Mobile App Redevelopment, API Integration, Offline Data Architecture, UX/UI Design, Cross-Platform Deployment, Analytics & Reporting
Overview
The Animal and Plant Health Association (APHA) maintains the national database of veterinary medicine datasheets for Ireland, a trusted reference resource relied upon by veterinarians, distributors, pharmacists, regulators and animal health professionals.
APHA engaged ERS to redevelop the Compendium App from the ground up, ensuring long-term sustainability, improved performance, and seamless integration with their existing Data Portal. The new application needed to retain the reliability of the prior system, operate fully offline after initial sync, and deliver a user-friendly experience across both iOS and Android platforms.
The Challenge
The existing APHA Compendium App had reached the end of its technical life, creating an urgent need for a modern replacement that could continue to serve veterinarians and animal health professionals without disruption.
In practice, many users depended on the app while working in environments with limited internet connectivity, such as rural farms or field clinics. This meant the new solution had to offer robust offline capabilities, ensuring that datasheets, product classifications and regulatory information remained accessible at all times.
It was also important that long-standing users would not have to relearn how to navigate the system. The existing categorisation and search models had become deeply embedded in veterinary workflows, and any disruption to these structures risked slowing practitioners down in time-sensitive situations. The challenge was therefore to rebuild the application entirely—modernising its architecture, improving its performance and extending its lifespan—while preserving the intuitive structure and reliability that users had come to trust.
Beyond the mobile experience, APHA needed deeper insight into how the Compendium resource was being used. The previous version offered no meaningful analytics, leaving APHA without visibility into which datasheets were most frequently accessed, how often synchronisation occurred, or how adoption differed across platforms. To support future planning and content management, a new analytical framework was required—one that could provide clear, actionable data without compromising user privacy.
Our Solution
ERS approached the Compendium App redevelopment with a focus on long-term durability, clinical reliability and streamlined data integration. The project began with detailed technical collaboration with APHA’s external data partner, ensuring a clean, efficient API structure that would synchronise the veterinary medicine datasheets from the APHA Data Portal into the mobile application. This API framework became the backbone of the app’s reliability, enabling frequent and consistent data refreshes while optimising bandwidth and load times.
To support APHA’s administrative and strategic needs, ERS implemented a statistical reporting module that collects detailed anonymised analytics. These insights include app download volumes across iOS andAndroid, frequency of synchronisation events, user access patterns and the popularity of specific categories and datasheets. This data enables APHA to understand how veterinary professionals engage with the resource, informing future updates and helping prioritise content improvements.
The final deployment process ensured compliance with Apple and Google’s app-store requirements, delivering a modern, fully supported application with a fresh technical foundation. ERS continues to support APHA through ongoing updates, maintenance and enhancements as regulatory needs and veterinary datasets evolve.
The Result
The new APHA Compendium App provides the veterinary community with a modern, fast and reliable mobile reference tool that meets the industry’s need for instant access to accurate medication information. The robust API integration ensures that datasheets remain current, while the offline-first architecture allows users to work seamlessly in any environment. Retaining the familiar categorisation structure has helped users transition smoothly to the new system, and improved search and navigation features have increased efficiency in clinical decision-making.
APHA now benefits from a scalable, future-proof application with deeper insights into usage trends and user behaviour. The analytics framework provides clarity on category popularity, synchronisation habits and access patterns, enabling APHA to continually enhance its service offering.
By delivering a complete redevelopment—combining strategic consultation, technical architecture, cross-platform mobile development and advanced data synchronisation—ERS has provided APHA with a modern, robust and dependable digital tool that strengthens the delivery of veterinary medicine information across Ireland’s animal health sector.