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The client is an Australian not-for-profit organization publishing more than 2500 topics for health professionals as part of their digital product. Their product is hosted on MPS’s proprietary platform, ScholarStor.

In the wake of COVID-19, the client came up with a noble idea of providing complimentary access to their product online as well as mobile app to support the healthcare practitioners who do not have a current subscription.

In their current subscription business model, any user who wishes to access their content online or on the mobile app, purchases a subscription by paying the corresponding fee and enjoys full access to all the topics.

However, owing to the unprecedented challenges presented before healthcare workers by COVID-19, the client decided to open up their content to the community at large. The major requirements were as follows:

• All individual users need to be provided free access irrespective of their validity of subscription
• Users need to be enabled to purchase a subscription even while they have the complimentary access

As per the existing system, if a user already possesses a valid subscription, i.e., has access to the system, then the purchase option cannot be opted for. Since the product had been customized and configured essentially for the subscriptions business, the challenge was to implement a hybrid model that provided free access of the content to all the individual users and, at the same time, let users purchase a subscription since the free access was available only for a limited period.

The technology team at MPS took up this request sand analyzed various ways to achieve the desired results.

As the first step, architecture for a hybrid model was designed, where both complimentary access and subscription access could co-exist. Next, the authorization model was tweaked to meet the requirement of concurrent availability of free access and paid subscriptions.

At a time when businesses are still adapting to the new normal of remote operations, we managed to implement and deploy the new model within a span of one month. It empowered a large number of users with important therapeutic content at no cost, and helped the client accomplish their objective of assisting healthcare providers in the difficult times and thereby enhancing their brand equity.

The implementation resulted in a custom hybrid access model. The validity of free access is for 3 months, up to July 31, 2020, and will be reviewed thereafter.

The model enabled the client to reach out to a much wider audience beyond their subscribers through the complimentary content, and possibly achieve a larger subscriber base in the future.

Some of the statistics within a week of the implementation are as follows:

• Number of new users registered within the first week of implementation: 3300
• Average number of new users on daily basis: 450
• Old users with expired subscriptions accessing the system again: 200