About ADHD America

ADHD America was established as a non-profit organization with the purpose of reaching school-aged students who have been diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Leveraging one-on-one and group academic coaching, as well as smartphone software solutions, ADHD America is committed to making a difference in the lives of students who struggle with the effects of their disorder.

The Challenge

ADHD America aims to help children navigate the trials of living with ADHD. About ten percent of school-aged children in America are diagnosed and live with ADHD, and for them the current educational system often starts them on a path of struggle. For example, half of children with ADHD repeat a grade by adolescence, and 80 percent are two years behind academically by age 11. If unaddressed, the consequences of ADHD magnify as they grow into adulthood. ADHD America wanted to empower kids with a transformative technology solution to help manage their disorder.

Why Amazon Web Services

Founded as a side-project by an Amazon Web Services (AWS) Partner Development Manager, ADHD America naturally turned to AWS to support its environment. As a non-profit, the ADHD America team partnered with several consulting and technology organizations to develop the ADHDmyway mobile application, with all work provided on a volunteer basis. Any solution that handles Protected Health Information (PHI) must be secure and HIPAA compliant. As an AWS Premier Consulting Partner, 1Strategy holds many competencies, and was specifically asked to contribute to this project because of extensive experience developing secure solutions. 1Strategy enthusiastically agreed to help.

 “We chose 1Strategy because not only do they have a great reputation, but they also have the expertise that we needed to lay the security groundwork”, states Andy Hall, CTO of ADHD America.  “It was absolutely essential that we followed all of the security best practices in order to make sure that we work with PHI data in a governed and compliant manner”, continues Andy.  “In our conversations with leaders at 1Strategy, it was apparent that they have the ability to chart our security course for the current and future state of our systems.”

The Benefits

Designed by ADHD coaches, ADHDmyway empowers kids to effectively gain control of their situations—and to help their providers and loved ones understand what is happening and determine how to best support and help them. Through the app, kids can privately journal and record their experiences and what they may be feeling or dealing with at a particular time. The information can be securely shared with their supportive health care providers and loved ones.

With a need to optimize ADHDmyway for benefit and cost, many AWS services were explored, including AWS Organizations, AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM), AWS CloudTrail, AWS Config, Amazon GuardDuty, AWS Security Hub, Amazon Cognito, AWS Web Application Firewall (WAF), Alexa Voice Service, Alexa Skill, Amazon DynamoDB, Amazon Lex, and Amazon Polly. A roadmap was developed based on the Security pillar of the AWS Well-Architected Framework.

After the roadmap was reviewed and approved, 1Strategy worked alongside another partner to build the solution, ensuring that the proper security features were built-in and implemented from the beginning. Foundational security components were deployed throughout the process of developing the solution, allowing the project team to go live with confidence. The project was highly collaborative. 1Strategy experts helped the ADHD America team dive into Lambda roles, provided security posture recommendations, and drove action.

The team enabled trusted access for AWS services such as AWS CloudTrail, AWS Config, and AWS Single Sign-On (AWS SSO). This happened automatically when these services were enabled with organizational capabilities. The services allow data from all accounts to be shared with the ADHD America management account.

An Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) was deployed, enabling the ADHDmyway mobile app to be highly secure while optimizing for scalability. 1Strategy experts were also able to provide cost saving recommendations and suggested a configuration that favored security and reliability. AWS CloudTrail was used to deploy an organization trail that logs data from all accounts and regions in the organization, including Amazon S3 data storage events. Logs are then sent to Amazon S3 and Amazon CloudWatch for monitoring.

With an emphasis on building a secure solution that was HIPAA compliant, 1Strategy team members worked with ADHDmyway project team members to build the following infrastructure:

“The work delivered by 1Strategy is vital to building the trust required in such a sensitive area of disorder management. With the foundational privacy elements in place, the ADHDmyway platform development has accelerated 10x, and ensuring we deliver a product in support of thousands of school-aged children with ADHD.” – Peter Gyurko, COO+Product Owner/ ADHDmyway

About 1Strategy

As an AWS Premier Consulting Partner, 1Strategy focuses exclusively on Amazon Web Services (AWS) to help businesses architect, migrate, and optimize their workloads on AWS, creating scalable, cost-effective, secure, and reliable solutions. 1Strategy also helps customers get real value from their data using comprehensive machine learning models and artificial intelligence. 1Strategy holds the AWS DevOps, Migration, Data and Analytics, Machine Learning Operations, and Security Competencies, and is a partner of the AWS Well-Architected and the AWS Public Sector Programs. With experts having deployed AWS solutions since 2007, 1Strategy is a leader in custom training—providing customers with the knowledge, tools, and best practices to manage those solutions over time. 1Strategy is a TEKsystems Global Services company with teams in Seattle and Salt Lake City, supporting customers throughout the US and across every vertical. 

Learn More

For more information about how 1Strategy can assist your company migrate to AWS, optimize AWS solutions including security and backup strategies, and receive custom training, visit 1Strategy.com.

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