How Make helps APPO Group reduce medical data input time by 90%

APPO uses Make to become a fully data-driven company, merging disconnected healthcare systems while keeping their patients’ information secure.

• Industry: Healthcare technology

• Use case: Operational efficiency, customer experience

• Country: Netherlands

APPO Group, a healthcare technology company, specializes in B2C and B2B online pharmacy services. Within the group, the APPO Healthcare division supplies hospitals and home-care patients with medication, infusion pumps, and other medical tools, while the National Apotheek division focuses on direct-to-customer prescription deliveries.

Running such a complex healthcare operation requires seamless logistics and real-time data access – something APPO was lacking. Manual processes and disconnected medical systems created delays in their services and increased the risk of errors.

Jeroen Donkers, Head of IT at APPO Group, explains how Make helps them securely unify fragmented software infrastructure, reduce reliance on external IT providers, and transition into a fully automated, data-driven organization.

“Automation in healthcare is no longer optional—it’s a necessity. With Make, we are not only growing efficiency but also improving patient care in ways we couldn’t before.”

The challenges 

Before using Make, APPO struggled with excessive manual work that slowed downscaling. They were also seeking to drive innovation and agility to support certain patient groups.

Managing hundreds of prescription requests manually

The Netherlands has nationwide stop-smoking programs, partially covered by health insurance. Patients enroll through specialized coaching companies, which determine whether they need nicotine replacement products or prescription medications.

Nicotine replacement requests are sent directly to APPO, while prescription medication requests are first sent to doctors, who then issue prescriptions through healthcare IT systems. These prescriptions are ultimately forwarded to APPO.

However, before using Make, this process was highly inefficient. While doctors issued prescriptions electronically through healthcare systems, coaches—who did not have access to the systems—had to send nicotine replacement requests to APPO via email with a PDF attachment. This disjointed process required APPO to match incoming PDF requests with digital prescriptions from doctors manually."

As a result, APPO had to process hundreds of requests daily, with nicotine replacement orders accounting for the highest volume. The reliance on manual processing led to errors, delays, and inefficiencies in medication distribution.

The Need to Streamline Multilingual Patient Support

Many refugees in the Netherlands face language barriers when receiving medication. That renders printed leaflets explaining dosage and side effects ineffective, increasing the risk of misuse or non-adherence. APPO wanted to deliver new healthcare services to this customer group and guarantee better healthcare quality by providing digital, multilingual medication instructions tailored to each prescription.

The solutions 

To eliminate manual data entry and prevent medication misuse, APPO uses Make to fully streamline workflows for both projects:

Automating stop-smoking program requests

To eliminate manual data entry, APPO digitized the stop-smoking program request forms, allowing coaches to submit applications via a dedicated portal. Using Make, these digital requests are captured and transformed into a structured digital prescription, formatted according to healthcare requirements. The data is then formatted into an EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) message, a standard used in healthcare and logistics to transfer information securely. As the next step, Make sends the prescription as an EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) message to a healthcare broker, an intermediary that processes and transmits healthcare data. The broker then forwards it to the national healthcare system, where the prescription becomes immediately visible to pharmacists for fulfillment. This process eliminates manual data entry, ensures accuracy, and speeds up processing time.

“By automating our stop-smoking program, we’ve turned a time-consuming manual process into a seamless, scalable operation. What used to take hours now happens in seconds, allowing us to focus on patient support rather than paperwork.”

Providing multilingual medication education via SMS

To support refugee patients, APPO introduced an automated workflow to deliver medication instructions in their native language. Once a prescription is processed, Make retrieves the relevant multilingual video from a content provider, shortens the link for easy access using a GDPR-compliant URL shortener, and sends it to the patient via an SMS using Twilio. This solution, built in just two days, ensures that patients understand their medication, improving adherence and safety.

“Being sure that patients understand their medication is as critical as providing the medication itself. With Make, we bridge language gaps and deliver essential health information in a way that’s accessible and immediate.”

The results

Thanks to implementing Make in their daily operations, APPO managed to:

• Reduced time spent on prescription and patient data entry into the pharmacy system by 90%.

• Cut time spent on the stop-smoking project management by 60%, growing efficiency more and more every day.

• Ensure faster medication delivery by automating prescription request submission

• Support patients’ safety by providing instant, multilingual medication instructions

• Improve data accuracy by cutting manual entry errors

• Automate only via the internal IT team, eliminating a need for external IT providers or new employees

Why are APPO and Make the perfect match?

According to Jeroen, removing data siloes is what got APPO truly hooked on Make. By smoothly merging disconnected healthcare systems, they could become a truly agile, rapidly growing company, much less dependent on external IT suppliers. Make provided an easy way to access and manage information while still complying with all healthcare regulations, ensuring patients' medical details stay safe. 

For APPO, Make’s is a secure, user-friendly, and scalable way to revolutionize home healthcare and give every patient the best care, anywhere.

“Make lets us scale our business without scaling our workforce. It brings us flexibility, agility, and the ability to innovate at speed. With Make, we’ve moved from siloed systems to a truly data-driven approach.”

Ready to automate your healthcare workflows like APPO? Get started with Make today.