“Let’s check it out,” she told a still unnerved Linda. She managed to get her friend’s insurance details from him. Then, the two got on the Treatment Center Finder on the platform, filled out the filters and information. Right away, the mother–daughter duo found a list of qualified treatment centers in Georgia. They reviewed the ratings, selected their preferred center, and called one of them. Around 6.00 pm that evening, Linda’s friend was checked in to the treatment center, in the care of some of the best doctors and therapists. The friend was retained in the center until he was considered completely out of risk a couple of weeks later. Today, two years clean, he is under counselling for addition, even as he volunteers for the foundation to help others like him.

Linda and her mom came out of the experience convinced that the public benefit foundation had saved Linda’s friend’s life. “It’s the best resource I’ve ever seen,” shares Linda. “And it was so easy and quick to use. My mother has already joined two groups in the platform’s Community section of the platform. Even my friend has joined a couple of them and plans to explore the rest of the platform. He is very active in the recovery and AA community and can’t wait to share the platform with everyone he knows.”

Solving a business need

When the public benefit foundation approached Marlabs, their need was clear. We needed to create a greenfield cloud-native social networking platform that could provide the millions suffering from addiction and their loved ones with all the connections, information, and resources they needed through journey to recovery and sobriety.

It had to offer guidance for people trying to come out of addiction and drug dependency, The site had to be scalable and highly available, and was to be built so it could add on eCommerce features in the future.

Having been involved in the project from the word go, Marlabs got down to the task, starting off with ideating the concept of a helpful online community, available 24/7. Then, using Azure Application Architecture we built the platform and designed an app (iOS and Android), with the following highlights:

• Azure hosted, multi-region deployment model
• Containerized Microservices hosted on Azure Kubernetes Service
• Polyglot persistence—Azure SQL DB, Azure Cosmos DB—Gremlin DB, Mongo DB
• Artificial Intelligence (AI) based Content Moderation using Spectrum AI
• High Performance, Scalability, Resiliency, Availability

The project for the foundation was funded by Microsoft (MS), which also supports the foundation’s mission with technology, product sales, marketing, sponsorship and PR Initiatives. An MS team—including a Microsoft US One Commercial Partner Chief Architect, Principal Cloud Solution Architect, and Principal Blockchain Solution Architect—then whetted the content and project, reviewing and finally approving all that Marlabs team had created for the foundation.

A welcome outcome

The platform is a social network like, say, Facebook, for sober people with the ability to establish connections, join groups of their interests, etc. It has a rich repository of media content (videos) offering help and advice on topics like dual diagnosis, detox, how rehab works, and sober house living. The platform also helps people be a part of virtual programs by finding the right treatment, therapist, and sober houses, with their ratings given.

The project won Marlabs a lot of praise. For starters, here’s the MS team’s architecture review feedback:

[Blurb] “The proposed architecture is really good. A very clever one!”

Additionally, the client was vociferous in their applause for the good job we turned in.

“We just want to say again THANKS for all of your hard work and commitment to take <the client’s thought> from a vision to reality. You did it! It wasn’t easy but I hope you are as proud of the platform as we are.”

Here’s one more pat on the back that came our way as the client was entering the big build phase:

“Just wanted to thank you and express my gratitude – for the great start with <the client intent>. Special mention for getting accolades from Microsoft team who called our proposed architecture a ‘very clever one.’ Thank you for all the extra efforts, communications, governance and the effective way that you have handled all the onboardings—(we)—are extremely delighted! Best luck!”

In the end…

Addiction is a mere dysfunction of the brain, but one that comes with an enormous social trauma. While there is much to be discovered about what causes addiction in one person and not in another, the road to recovery and rebuilding one’s life can be a harrowing experience by itself.

Finding others fighting the same battle and feeling safe about one’s issues in their company could make all the difference for addicts fighting to get back to normalcy and to their and their loved ones’ lives. And thus, the need for such social networks that Marlabs built for organizations working to help them.

Because the opposite of addiction is not sobriety—it is connection… staying connected to others who’ve tread similar roads and are willing to show you a way out.

Note: Names are masked to protect identities. The client’s name has not been mentioned, in accordance with the Client–Marlabs confidentiality agreement. Everything else about the feature is based on real events.