Why Patient Engagement Technology Has To Function Outside of Visits

The following is a guest article by Teddy Aaron, Founder and CEO at Soothe Note, and Brynn Forlizzi, Co-Founder and Head of Patient Experience at Soothe Note

Many healthcare technologies focus on the apparent aspects of care.

An appointment. An email notification. Lab results. A reminder. Follow-up notes.

These aspects play a crucial role in ensuring quality healthcare services. However, based on our observations, some of the most challenging aspects of care take place outside of the doctor’s office.

They occur at home when the patient needs to remember which day they first experienced a certain symptom – Tuesday or Friday. They happen at home when the caregiver tries to keep track of all the information connected with treatment and appointments. These problems also happen prior to the appointment, when the patient’s family recognizes that they forgot to mention something important to the doctor.

This is the problem that Soothe Note was created to address.

Soothe Note is a free, privacy-first app designed for cancer patients and their families. This app enables users to track symptoms, mood, medication intake, energy level, and appointments, as well as leave daily notes in one easy-to-manage platform. Additionally, Soothe Note aims to facilitate summarizing daily notes prior to appointments so that patients’ families will not need to recall their past two weeks in full.

We chose to create this tool not because we assumed that cancer patients would benefit from yet another complicated app.

Rather, we created this app because we understood how easily important information could be forgotten.

Our team includes two people who experienced cancer in different capacities: Brynn was a cancer patient herself back in her high-school years, while Teddy took care of their cancer patient relative.

Although each of us had a slightly different experience of dealing with cancer, we recognized the same problem: families were holding too much unstructured information in their heads.

Not because patients or caregivers are careless. Rather, they have been asked to remember all kinds of information at a very challenging moment in their life.

A cancer patient may be experiencing fatigue, nausea, anxiety, distraction, or simply not wanting to engage with anything related to their condition. At the same time, a caregiver is trying to help but not ask for too much information, especially knowing that some days their loved one does not want to talk about cancer at all.

Nevertheless, the information does not appear miraculously.

Sleep changes. Medication intake. Pain. Days of fatigue. Questions that come to mind at home but seem impossible to formulate during the appointment. These details are necessary to understand what is happening between the appointments, provided that all that information is collected and organized.

In other words, this is where healthcare technologies must become more realistic.

While a fitness app, for instance, requires increased commitment and motivation, cancer treatment is not the optimal condition for that kind of activity. In fact, healthcare technologies should aim to facilitate the process rather than making it increasingly demanding for patients.

At least, we chose to stick to this philosophy in designing Soothe Note.

The app’s daily check-in allows patients to report their feelings briefly by answering yes-or-no questions. This way, they can share detailed information about their mood, medication intake, pain level, energy level, sleep, hydration, food, and one accomplishment per day without writing a whole journal entry. The goal is not to create additional workload. It instead allows cancer patients to record necessary information quickly and efficiently.

At the same time, caregiver support was also crucial for Soothe Note. Since the majority of the caregiving for the cancer patients is done by their family members or friends, Soothe Note allows patients to give caregivers read-only access to the collected information through a unique access code.

For many reasons, this function may prove essential.

First, the patients do not want to talk about their condition anymore. Second, the caregiver is not sure whether it is appropriate to ask these questions. Third, both the patient and the caregiver may experience fatigue that turns routine conversations into additional stress.

In any case, healthcare technology should decrease the number of burdens a person experiences.

Privacy is equally critical since any healthcare-related app collects personal information. In this regard, it is crucial that patients know that Soothe Note will not sell, analyze, or track any information for commercial purposes.

Therefore, our app is completely ad-free and user-controlled.

In conclusion, although Soothe Note may seem specific, the lessons it teaches are universal. Healthcare technology should not try too hard to make patients more engaged with the healthcare process itself.

Rather, the main goal of such an app is to minimize their stress in order to ensure proper treatment.

Thus, patient engagement technology should help the patient rather than requiring extra time spent within an application.

In this context, any app that provides relevant data for doctors, caregivers, or even patients themselves is valuable indeed.

About Teddy Aaron and Brynn Forlizzi

Teddy Aaron is a high school student from Greenwich, Connecticut, and Brynn Forlizzi is a high school student from Darien, Connecticut, and a cancer survivor. We came together to build Soothe Note, a free, privacy-first app for cancer patients and caregivers.  Soothe Note was built after seeing how difficult it can be for patients and caregivers to manage the space between appointments.

The following is a guest article by Teddy Aaron, Founder and CEO at Soothe Note, and Brynn Forlizzi, Co-Founder and Head of Patient Experience at Soothe Note

Many healthcare technologies focus on the apparent aspects of care.

An appointment. An email notification. Lab results. A reminder. Follow-up notes.

These aspects play a crucial role in ensuring quality healthcare services. However, based on our observations, some of the most challenging aspects of care take place outside of the doctor’s office.

They occur at home when the patient needs to remember which day they first experienced a certain symptom – Tuesday or Friday. They happen at home when the caregiver tries to keep track of all the information connected with treatment and appointments. These problems also happen prior to the appointment, when the patient’s family recognizes that they forgot to mention something important to the doctor.

This is the problem that Soothe Note was created to address.

Soothe Note is a free, privacy-first app designed for cancer patients and their families. This app enables users to track symptoms, mood, medication intake, energy level, and appointments, as well as leave daily notes in one easy-to-manage platform. Additionally, Soothe Note aims to facilitate summarizing daily notes prior to appointments so that patients’ families will not need to recall their past two weeks in full.

We chose to create this tool not because we assumed that cancer patients would benefit from yet another complicated app.

Rather, we created this app because we understood how easily important information could be forgotten.

Our team includes two people who experienced cancer in different capacities: Brynn was a cancer patient herself back in her high-school years, while Teddy took care of their cancer patient relative.

Although each of us had a slightly different experience of dealing with cancer, we recognized the same problem: families were holding too much unstructured information in their heads.

Not because patients or caregivers are careless. Rather, they have been asked to remember all kinds of information at a very challenging moment in their life.

A cancer patient may be experiencing fatigue, nausea, anxiety, distraction, or simply not wanting to engage with anything related to their condition. At the same time, a caregiver is trying to help but not ask for too much information, especially knowing that some days their loved one does not want to talk about cancer at all.

Nevertheless, the information does not appear miraculously.

Sleep changes. Medication intake. Pain. Days of fatigue. Questions that come to mind at home but seem impossible to formulate during the appointment. These details are necessary to understand what is happening between the appointments, provided that all that information is collected and organized.

In other words, this is where healthcare technologies must become more realistic.

While a fitness app, for instance, requires increased commitment and motivation, cancer treatment is not the optimal condition for that kind of activity. In fact, healthcare technologies should aim to facilitate the process rather than making it increasingly demanding for patients.

At least, we chose to stick to this philosophy in designing Soothe Note.

The app’s daily check-in allows patients to report their feelings briefly by answering yes-or-no questions. This way, they can share detailed information about their mood, medication intake, pain level, energy level, sleep, hydration, food, and one accomplishment per day without writing a whole journal entry. The goal is not to create additional workload. It instead allows cancer patients to record necessary information quickly and efficiently.

At the same time, caregiver support was also crucial for Soothe Note. Since the majority of the caregiving for the cancer patients is done by their family members or friends, Soothe Note allows patients to give caregivers read-only access to the collected information through a unique access code.

For many reasons, this function may prove essential.

First, the patients do not want to talk about their condition anymore. Second, the caregiver is not sure whether it is appropriate to ask these questions. Third, both the patient and the caregiver may experience fatigue that turns routine conversations into additional stress.

In any case, healthcare technology should decrease the number of burdens a person experiences.

Privacy is equally critical since any healthcare-related app collects personal information. In this regard, it is crucial that patients know that Soothe Note will not sell, analyze, or track any information for commercial purposes.

Therefore, our app is completely ad-free and user-controlled.

In conclusion, although Soothe Note may seem specific, the lessons it teaches are universal. Healthcare technology should not try too hard to make patients more engaged with the healthcare process itself.

Rather, the main goal of such an app is to minimize their stress in order to ensure proper treatment.

Thus, patient engagement technology should help the patient rather than requiring extra time spent within an application.

In this context, any app that provides relevant data for doctors, caregivers, or even patients themselves is valuable indeed.

About Teddy Aaron and Brynn Forlizzi

Teddy Aaron is a high school student from Greenwich, Connecticut, and Brynn Forlizzi is a high school student from Darien, Connecticut, and a cancer survivor. We came together to build Soothe Note, a free, privacy-first app for cancer patients and caregivers.  Soothe Note was built after seeing how difficult it can be for patients and caregivers to manage the space between appointments.