When Benyam Alemu joined the mobile team at UC San Diego Health in 2020, the MyUCSDHealth app was facing major challenges. The crash rate stood at 42%, the user interface wasn’t accessible for older or disabled patients, and the App Store rating lingered at just 2.4 stars. In this piece, he walks through the “luck, teamwork and hard work” that allowed them to move from a low performing mobile app to one of the most downloaded and top rated healthcare applications on the app store. He also shares that he did not have a technical degree, but learned, thanks to excellent managers, team members and through his own passion to solve problems for his clients – health care providers – and their patients – vulnerable and often unable to use technology without the care of technical teams and people like those described below. Learn more about Alemu’s UC Tech Award, in the article entitled, “Benyam Alemu Sood and Jeffrey Engel Win the Gold Operational Excellence Award at the 2025 UC Tech Awards,” and read his personal statement about the project and the team, below.
“The UC system did a fantastic job grooming me from a young man with no experience. They were patient with me. They mentored me. They said, ‘This is what you should learn. Here are some stretch projects.’ So everything—from directors to frontline staff—they gave me that garden of water and sunlight and soil to help me thrive.”
Listening to Users, Then Engineering a Fix
Rather than jumping straight into code, Alemu began with empathy and research. “Usually what helped me the most was asking feedback from our people outside of IT,” he said. It was through the nurses and the non-technical staff members that he and his team were able to understand how a non-technical person assesses the application. They also relied on reading app store reviews.
At the time, the mobile team had just 1.5 full-time developers. They zeroed in on two high-friction issues: app crashes and a frustrating login process. Through defensive programming, crash analytics, and user behavior tracking, they cut crash rates by 94%.
Alemu built real-time monitoring tools that traced crash points down to the specific button clicked and the error triggered, allowing the team to catch and fix issues before they escalated. The login flow was redesigned with larger buttons, Face ID support, and Apple VoiceOver integration.
“In healthcare we tend to have sicker and older people than the typical population,” he said. “So you can’t have tiny buttons or fonts that people can read. We made them gigantic, taking up the whole screen real estate and adding technology like Apple VoiceOver. Even if you’re blind, the app will read to you and guide you on, how do you operate it.”
A Data-Driven Centric Approach – Segmenting Issues by Theme
One of Alemu’s key strategies for improving the app was building an automated dashboard that categorized user reviews by common issues. As the volume of feedback grew—from just a few dozen reviews to over 10,000—he developed a system that used data science to group complaints into themes, such as login problems, difficulties contacting providers, or general user confusion. This proactive approach allowed the team to quickly identify patterns and focus on the areas that needed the most attention.
Building a Technical Career Superb Management Skills
Alemu did not have a traditional computer science background. He credits mentorship, self-driven learning, and cross-functional teamwork to his success. Starting six years ago, he built up his skills by reading, experimenting, and staying deeply engaged in both mobile development and patient experience. Most importanatly, he emphasizes, that his team provided him with excellent management practices – giving him with the information, tools, team members and trust needed to allow him to grow in his role.
He extends special thanks to Jeffrey Engel, a leader on the mobile team; Dave Dewey, his supportive manager; and the Web Services crew—Derrick Edwards, Ziya Sun, Ke Yang, Jaime Rios, Ken Jensen, and Miela Lacanilao—for helping bring UC San Diego’s Health’s mobile experience to new heights.
He attributes his winning the UC Tech Awards reflection of the support he received across the UC system. “The UC system did a fantastic job grooming me from a young man with no experience. They were patient with me. They mentored me. They said, ‘This is what you should learn. Here are some stretch projects.’ So everything—from directors to frontline staff—they gave me that garden of water and sunlight and soil to help me thrive.”
He continues by crediting the healthcare providers, whom he says, “allow us to deliver this healthcare…all of the physicians, nurses, frontline staff that work so hard – without them, we wouldn’t get this patient experience boost.”
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Benyam Alemu Sood
Senior Software Engineer – mobile apps, enterprise architecture and data engineering
UC San Diego Health
