With the development of the digital economy, enterprises are accelerating their digital and intelligent transformation to enhance their competitiveness, leading to a surge in demand for various software and applications. However, traditional development methods, which are time-consuming, labor-intensive, costly, and technically demanding, have gradually failed to keep pace with corporate growth.

In such a predicament, low-code is undoubtedly the best choice. Developers with varying levels of experience can use low-code platforms to rapidly assemble enterprise-grade applications—much like building with LEGO bricks—simply by dragging and dropping components or adding a few lines of simple code. This approach enables them to quickly deliver solutions that previously required programmers to spend considerable time developing, thereby addressing business needs in a timely manner.

The choices of industry giants often serve as bellwethers for the sector. In 2023, Medtronic leveraged the OutSystems low-code platform to create a personalized portal named “Click.” This portal significantly streamlined workflows for over 80,000 employees in handling numerous IT services and approval processes, thereby saving substantial work hours and enhancing operational efficiency.

This is not the first collaboration between Medtronic and OutSystems. Since 2018, Medtronic has been using OutSystems to develop various applications for patient device monitoring services.

For example, the FocusOn™ digital cardiac monitoring platform is a remote monitoring and triage solution designed for patients with heart disease. By monitoring and analyzing data from implanted devices, it can promptly detect issues such as abnormal heart rhythms and device diagnostic errors. These events are recorded and proactively reported to the patient’s physician, enabling timely clinical intervention while saving physicians’ time.

Why Does Medtronic, One of the World’s Largest Medical Device Companies, Frequently Favor OutSystems?

OutSystems, founded by Paulo Rosado in 2001 and originating from Lisbon, the capital of Portugal, is a company that provides low-code visual development services, with its current headquarters located in Boston, United States.

Paulo Rosado boasts an extensive professional background, holding a Master’s degree in Computer Science from Stanford University and a degree in Computer Engineering from NOVA University Lisbon. He has held various positions in R&D and product management at Oracle in Silicon Valley and previously served as Executive Vice President of Global Marketing at Altitude Software.

OutSystems is the second company founded by Paulo Rosado. He previously co-founded Intervento, an e-commerce software infrastructure company, which he successfully sold in 1999.

As CEO of OutSystems, Paulo Rosado oversees the company’s day-to-day operations, product development, and formulation of its technology strategy. Under his leadership, the company has grown from an early-stage startup into a unicorn in the low-code sector. Paulo Rosado emphasizes, “OutSystems’ mission remains unwavering: we aim to empower every company to innovate through the power of software.”

OutSystems CEO: Paulo Rosado

Currently, OutSystems has been named one of the “Best Cloud Companies” by Forbes for four consecutive years. With offices around the world, it boasts a community of more than 435,000 members and 350 partners. Its thousands of active customers span 87 countries and 22 industries globally, including well-known companies such as Intel, Mercedes-Benz, Schneider Electric, Warner Bros., and AXA Group.

OutSystems has completed up to eight rounds of financing, with total funding exceeding $800 million. Notably, in June 2018, the company secured a joint investment of $360 million from KKR and Goldman Sachs Group, pushing its total valuation above $1 billion and instantly establishing it as a new unicorn in the global low-code development platform industry.

OutSystems’ Funding History | Source: Crunchbase

OutSystems combines visual model-driven development with AI, DevOps, and cloud technologies to create a modern application platform. This platform provides developers with a single integrated development environment covering the entire development lifecycle, including development, quality assurance, deployment, monitoring, and management.

The OutSystems platform also provides a comprehensive security authentication and authorization system to protect enterprise data and systems from threats. The platform can be used in various deployment scenarios, including cloud, on-premises, and hybrid environments. It also supports integration with other technologies, such as Java and .NET.

OutSystems Platform Image source: Company website

Developers can quickly master the suite of tools and features offered by the platform through OutSystems’ training and support services, enabling more efficient and rapid application development. For example:

a. OutSystems Cloud：OutSystems Cloud simplifies IT infrastructure management, enabling developers to focus more on business objectives. It also provides auto-scaling and backup capabilities to ensure applications always operate at peak performance.

b. OutSystems Forge：An open development ecosystem that includes hundreds of reusable components, extensions, and solutions to help developers build applications faster. OutSystems Forge is also a developer community where users can share knowledge and experience with others.

c. OutSystems AI：A machine learning-based analytics tool that predicts business trends and performs scenario analysis using real-time data. OutSystems AI can also generate optimization recommendations, helping developers enhance efficiency and create greater value through intelligent decision-making.

Due to its comprehensive functionality and rich toolset, OutSystems has received high praise from customers and recognition from research institutions.

Humana, one of the top five healthcare companies in the United States, leveraged OutSystems to quadruple its development speed and reduce costs by 25%, achieving exceptional delivery outcomes. Bruce Buttles, Director of Digital Channels at Humana, stated, “Using a development platform to build applications has turned the impossible into the possible. Delivering products at four times the speed while enhancing quality is a game-changer—making feasible a range of innovations that were previously too risky or costly.”

In Gartner’s “2023 Critical Capabilities for Low-Code Application Platforms” report, OutSystems received the highest scores in three of the four capability categories.

After years of development, low-code platforms abroad have established mature and stable technological pathways and business models. In contrast, China’s low-code industry started later but is currently experiencing rapid growth with a considerable growth rate.

According to the "2022 Low-Code Industry Research Report" released by iResearch, driven by enterprise digital transformation and the pandemic, the market size of the low-code industry reached RMB 2.75 billion in 2021, with a growth rate of 72.4%. The compound annual growth rate is projected to reach 44.1% over the next four years, and the market size of China's low-code industry is expected to reach RMB 11.84 billion by 2025.

The healthcare market is an indispensable segment of the broader industry, and low-code development is seeing increasingly widespread application in the medical field. Currently, some domestic healthcare enterprises and medical institutions have begun leveraging low-code platforms for product development and deployment. Furthermore, certain low-code platform vendors have started to launch solutions specifically tailored to the healthcare industry.

For example, Sun Yat-sen University Cancer Center independently developed over 80 applications using “YiDa,” DingTalk’s low-code application development platform. These applications serve more than ten core departments, including medical services, nursing, scientific research, and teaching, covering over 400 scenario-based functions such as workflow approval. Defan’s low-code PaaS platform has partnered with numerous renowned pharmaceutical companies, including Lei Yun Shang, Hutchison Whampoa Pharmaceuticals, Pharmaron, and China Resources Sanjiu, to jointly create a rich portfolio of software products in the broader health sector. Fuxin Kechuang launched the “Ziwei Software Customization Platform,” a customized software solution for hospital informatization scenarios, and has established close collaborations with multiple healthcare IT companies.

As the digital transformation of the healthcare industry deepens, various medical information systems and applications require faster, more flexible, and more easily customizable development approaches. Low-code development is one of the optimal solutions to meet these needs, and its application prospects remain exceptionally broad.