The challenge — an IPO-track hospital group needed a product team they could plan around
The client is one of Saudi Arabia’s largest hospital groups, recently IPO’d. When they first engaged DevBatch three years ago, they were assembling the product capability that would eventually carry the patient super-platform across the network. They needed a partner who could run the team, not a vendor who could ship a feature.
The deal shape they could sign was specific: fixed-cost build plus annual maintenance, board-approved, multi-year. That shape is unusual for US-style engineering services firms, most of whom price T&M and walk away when the build is done. It is the standard shape for Tier 2 healthcare buyers in the GCC.
What we did — ran the product team. Shipped the platform. Renewed the AMC twice.
DevBatch ran the day-to-day product team — engineers, design, QA, project management — under a fixed-cost contract that funded the build and an annual maintenance contract that funded continuous improvement. The AMC has renewed twice. The contract structure means the relationship doesn’t end when a feature ships; it ends when the platform retires.
The build covered the patient-facing surface: scheduling, records, telehealth, and the patient super-platform that ties them together. Ambient AI on the clinical side and patient-facing AI on the front-end have both become roadmap surfaces over the life of the engagement, not opening pitches. The platform got built first; the AI lives on top.
The most strategically valuable outcome was not technical. The CTO who originally signed the deal later moved to a London-affiliated hospital branch in the same city and brought DevBatch in for app modernization there. The relationship outlives the contract. The deal shape outlives the buyer. That pattern, more than any single shipped feature, is what the next ten years of DevBatch’s healthcare practice depends on.
What it means for you
This engagement is the proof DevBatch points to when a healthcare CIO asks “have you done this before”. The answer is yes, for three years, on the deal shape your board will approve. We can replicate it in your environment, on your compliance posture, with the time horizon your procurement office actually plans against.
The pipeline that grew from this engagement — partner GCC hospitals, follow-on modernization conversations — is the durable signal. The next conversation starts there.