Leafwell is a telehealth platform that simplifies access to medical cannabis. Founded in 2019 by Emily Fisher, a breast cancer survivor who experienced the therapeutic benefits of cannabis firsthand, Leafwell connects patients with licensed healthcare professionals to obtain medical marijuana cards online.
Serving over a million users monthly, Leafwell supports more than 100 health conditions, backed by a team of cannabis-knowledgeable healthcare providers. Their services are available seven days a week, in partnership with over 3,500 organizations, grounded in rigorous scientific research to promote safe and effective cannabis use.
Leafwell's mission is to revolutionize access to cannabis and empower wellness journeys by personalizing, prioritizing, and optimizing cannabinoid-based therapy recommendations. They aim to eliminate the trial and error in finding effective formulations and doses, integrating cannabis into treatment plans for comprehensive and informed care.
Since its inception, Leafwell has made significant progress, helping record numbers of people each month. They provide a space for learning about the therapeutic uses of cannabis at scale, contributing to the growing body of impactful research in the field. Committed to supporting individuals on their health journeys both in the U.S. and globally, Leafwell strives to make meaningful differences in people's lives.
In 2024, we entered a strategic partnership with Leafwell. Initially, our collaboration centered on advisory support in areas like DevOps, site reliability, scaling, and performance optimization. Over time, this partnership evolved, with our founder, Ilie Ghiciuc, joining Leafwell’s board to contribute to their organizational growth and leadership strategy.
As the cannabis industry continues to gain traction, our partnership expanded to include a significant overhaul of Leafwell's platform—transitioning from an older Ruby monolith to a modern, serverless architecture.
In May, two of our developers began working on a prototype that has since evolved into the new Leafwell medical app. Currently, a team of nearly 10 people is dedicated to its development.
With Leafwell preparing for its next growth phase and expanding its services, we’re proud to support its journey and help position them to meet market demands with innovation and efficiency.
Leafwell’s existing Ruby monolith platform posed significant roadblocks as demand for their services grew. The system struggled with increased traffic, causing performance bottlenecks that impacted both patients and healthcare providers. Deployments were slow and risky, requiring extended downtimes for updates. Additionally, integrating new features, such as advanced data analytics for research and personalized treatment recommendations, proved difficult due to the tightly coupled architecture.
Security was another key concern. As a telehealth platform handling sensitive medical data, Leafwell needed a system that could ensure HIPAA compliance, provide robust authentication, and safeguard patient records. Without a scalable and secure foundation, Leafwell risked limiting their ability to serve their growing user base and expand their offerings in the fast-evolving cannabis healthcare industry.
Before implementing any technical changes, we first conducted an in-depth analysis of Leafwell’s existing Ruby monolith, identifying pain points related to scalability, performance, and data management. By collaborating closely with Leafwell’s stakeholders, we aligned our approach with their business objectives and growth plans, ensuring that the new architecture would support long-term expansion.
To future-proof Leafwell’s platform, we transitioned from a monolithic structure to a serverless microservices architecture. Each service was designed to operate independently, improving scalability, resilience, and deployment efficiency. We leveraged AWS’s cloud-native tools, including:
Security was a top priority. We implemented:
Our teams worked in agile sprints, maintaining close collaboration through daily stand-ups, sprint planning, and bi-weekly demos. This approach ensured continuous alignment and rapid iteration based on real-time feedback.
To ensure a smooth transition, we implemented a continuous delivery strategy, deploying multiple updates per day. The new application was introduced incrementally, initially going live for a few hours at a time before full-scale rollout. This allowed us to:
The new Leafwell medical app is now fully operational, serving 10,000+ users monthly with a modern, intuitive experience. The enhanced platform supports larger datasets, faster analytics, and more impactful research—positioning Leafwell for scalable growth and industry leadership.
"Working with you guys helped narrow down what our product is supposed to do, implement it, measure it, improve it, and quickly iterate. Leafwell has transformed into a data-driven company, leveraging new platform flexibility for rapid testing and optimization. The new system allowed us to track more data and pivot quickly. We didn't have these capabilities before Leafwell Next."
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By combining technical expertise with a collaborative approach, we’ve helped Leafwell achieve a significant transformation, equipping them to meet the demands of a dynamic and growing industry.
The transition to the new system was more than just a technical upgrade—it had a direct impact on Leafwell’s business. Since launching the modernized platform, Leafwell has seen a 20% increase in user engagement and a 30% reduction in support tickets related to system performance.
With improved analytics capabilities, Leafwell can now track user behavior more effectively, leading to data-driven decisions that enhance both patient outcomes and business strategy. The flexibility of the new architecture has also positioned them to expand into new markets without the technical debt that previously slowed growth.
Looking ahead, we’re exploring deeper AI-driven personalization for treatment recommendations, further enhancing security with advanced compliance monitoring, and optimizing infrastructure costs to support Leafwell’s continued growth. Our partnership remains ongoing, with new updates and features in the pipeline to keep Leafwell at the forefront of digital healthcare innovation.
