About The Developer
Developer Experience
Dave DePottie is a 40 year veteran of Software Engineering. He is now Chairman of All Things PG and IT Director. Dave has been developing websites since the Internet was invented, so Phase 2 is well within the scope of his experience as a Sr. Software Engineer. Since graduating with a BSc from Brock University in Canada in 1984, Dave has held positions as Sr. Developer, Project Leader North America, Manager of Professional Services, Systems Analysts, Systems Administrator, and DBA/Database Specialist, and most recently, Sr. Software Engineer working for large corporations and industry leaders. His last role was managing a team in India (6) to perform a large multi-year database migration of Scientific and Medical Publications and Journals into AWS. These 60M+ record databases included PubMed (Medline), WebOfScience (WOS), ScienceWire, JCR, USPTO Patents and Grant databases from around the world.
You may review Dave’s bio at Dave DePottie, and please check out the bios of all out Board Members.
All Things PG Technology Platform
As IT Director, Dave used his tech experience to create a nonprofit tecnhology platform callend for All Things PG, called a Tenant, with the help of a Microsoft nonprofit grant of 300 M365 Business licences and a $2000 yearly grant toward hosting websites with a database in Azure. Essentally, free user licenses, free software and free web hosting. We now have a completely integrated technology platform for the future, with unlimited growth potential.
Within our Tenant We have our own custom domain, and all the adminitration tools we need, including Exchange, SharePoint, Teams, Users and Groups, Permissions, plus all the office applications we need as part of M 365. Our nonprofit platform can host a website of any size, with any database, all paid for the the $2000 annual grant. Each member of All Things PG has a work email address in the form firstname@allthingspg.org, and external accounts for staff at OHSU, allowing everyone to participate in our bi-monthly virtual Board Meetings Teams meetings hosted within the ATPG domain. Meetings are automatically recorded, with AI generates meeting notes, and everything is securely stored on the organization’s 1tb OneDrive space and in SharePoint. Everything is integrated with users, groups, teams, calendars and emails and more. We are well situated internally and externally to carry on as a small, medium or large nonprofit organization. We are also well situated to successfully implement all aspects of the Phase 2 enhancements, as a professional project using proven Software Engineering practices.
As a patient organization, ATPG has considerable credentials from all its members, with many years of personal PG experience, and Dr. Ortega as our Medical Director and a world leading PG expert. We are an organization that is rapidly growing, and built from the volunteer spirit of giving back to the PG community.
Notes from the Developer (Dave DePottie)
I envision a website where users come to us for help, and to solve problems. It’s not just about information anymore. There’s lots of information out there than can be googled or searched by AI.The focus now must be on solutions.
PG is much more than a skin disease, and affects all areas of your life. As an experienced patient with PG, I can tell you that PG takes over your life, and leads you down many paths, and not all of them are good ones. There are alwyas so many issues to address and solve, and its easy to get lost and not know what to do, or where to turn for help. Support groups are great, and become your second family. They are there when you need them. All Things PG is not a support group, but a wealth of information about the disease, and all the activites we do as an organization for the benefit of the PG Community. It is much more than just information about the disease. It is about people, and interactions with other associations, lists of clinical trials, research opportunites, PFACs, a powerful Clinic Finder, patient success stories, topics on wound care, supplies, dealing with insurance companies, apply for disability… the potential for information and solutions is endless. That’s what PG does to a person and that is why www.allthingspg.org is so important.
Our website needs to be more than just information, because users may NOT know the right questions to ask. Many visitors will be newly diagnosed patients search for answers. I believe that with a good design, our website can offer a guided experience that will lead them to the help they need, particularly through the use of a fully searchable Knowledge Base (KB).
A user could be a new patient or new caregiver, a doctor treating PG for the first time, a pharmaceutical representative curious how to do clinical trials for PG patients. The number of scenarios is endless, and yet there is only one website. In order to be all things about PG, we need to support whoever might be visiting the site and why. Our current website gaves us a a great PG Foundation presense on the web, but the content is static and limited, and its up to the user to find the solution.
With Phase 2 and an enhanced user experience, we can guide someone to the information they need and how to apply it. First we need to know who is visiting the site, so the site must allow selecting their user experience to tell us who they, are without having to register. The central goal objective or goal of Phase 2 is to create a searchable Knowledge Base of accurate, vetted, curated content on any topic, for every type of user. The more content we collect the better. Search results will show Menu Items connected to Content that is contained in the Knowledge Base.
From my own personal experience, I started PG way back in 2015 and quickly became disabled. My wife became my caregiver overnight and was lost as to what to do. She saw me in pain and bedridden, but couldn’t help. She didn’t know how to treat my wounds, but learned. She worried about me every day. She researched the internet, found tons of information about PG, but not all of it was consistent or accurate. Much of the information was out of date. She kept digging non-stop and joined the FB group for PG. She shared everything she learned with the group, and she took care of me, which was a 24/7 job. My family had to chip in to cover shifts, so that I was never left alone, even in the hospital. What a journey for all of us, and somehow we got through it. Not everyone has the same thirst and ability for knowledge as my wife, but all are equally motivated. A Caregiver should be able to come to the website, read caregiver stories, watch videos on wound care, and consult the knowledge base. I shared that thirst for knowledge and learned everything I could about PG, and we both became very active on the FB support group trying to help others learn as well. My vision for Phase 2 is to make it a resource that helps everyone.
For me, Phase 2 is about making it easier for the next caregiver, or a new patient, or a provider that has never treated PG before. How can we help a provider? We are not doctors, but we are experienced patients. Doctors can read our stories, see our pictures, and search our knowledge base to understand the emotional journey. Our current website already has valuable, trusted information about diagnosis and treatment, but we can do so much more. We need an easy way to add content, examples, stories, pictures, videos and more. All of this content, linked to menu items, will go into the knowledge base. A user of the site will enter a search and quickly get a list of all articles in the system. That will be the core of Phase 2, coupled with an enhanced user experience, and a database to support all the new features. A database is a critical step to offering solutions not just information. My hope is that anyone, regardless of who you are, will benefit from www.allthingspg.org.
Please note: All design, concepts, database, proof of concept, this documentation site and so forth is proprietary, and of my own invention. DCMS is something new that I created over a year ago, on my own time, using my own computers, servrs and licensed software that I personally paid for. Even this documentation site hosted by GitHub Pages is paid for by a monthly subscription that I’ve had all year. Even though I own the software, it is my hope that DCMS and Phase 2 enhancements will be fully adopted by All Things PG, with the support of our benefactors.
Thank you!
Dave DePottie
Chairman, IT Director
All Things PG