Yes We Are Mad

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the director of innovation and transformation at Nicklaus Children’s Health System. We are a large pediatric hospital in South Florida.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Yes We Are Mad?

We were trying to find a solution for maintaining competencies around CPR. Generally speaking, it requires clinicians, nurses, etc. to attend classes in person for recertification and it’s a very time consuming and ongoing task. With Mad, we explored the possibility of using virtual reality to do the recertification courses.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Their team built the application for us from the ground up. We gave them the guidelines from the American Heart Association as our protocol, and they ensured that we brought in all the elements of the latest techniques.

From there, we built out the gamification of the pap to allow you to earn points and rewards for accuracy and speed. They used Unity for the design elements, and for the servers and everything to do with the data flows we’re using AWS.
Mad handled everything from branding to design, UX/UI, all the way down to color schemes. They had direct involvement in helping us understand what users are really responding to in applications of this kind so that we were better able to market the product once it launched as well.

Since that project, we’ve maintained a very strong partnership with their company, to the point where they’re a bit like our innovation back office in many ways. A lot of ideas that we get on the clinical side of things, they are able to jump on and run with to see if we can create a solution for it together, which has allowed us a lot of flexibility in our efforts as well.

What was the team composition?

We worked with 2–3 individuals from their team on the initial design component to determine consumer patterns and behaviors and translate those into wireframing elements. We worked with their videographer crew for the production, and then another 2–3 members of their technical team for all of the development.

How did you come to work with Yes We Are Mad?

My colleague and I ran into their head of business development completely by chance at a small innovation summit in Miami.

How much have you invested with them?

The VR pieces of the work themselves have cost around $300,000, and the administrative element is closer to $125,000 so overall we are just north of $400,000 in total.

What is the status of this engagement?

The initial project kicked off around January 2017 and the VR CPR app is now a full-blown platform with a variety of different training modules included. We are continuing to work with them on any new additions that we come up with and other points of potential innovation as well.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

Since the product is meant for a relatively niche element of the professional healthcare system, it was never intended for a large base of users, but we were somewhere around 150–200 users at our consistent max range. That utilization, at a rate of about once or twice per week, was really exciting to see.
On top of the usage numbers, we have gotten overwhelmingly positive feedback from everyone who has interacted with the product, especially with the latest release of the immersive and interactive product environment. That’s with regard not only to how it functions and how it’s designed but also with how accurate everything is even down to the placement of the equipment in real hospital settings.

How did Yes We Are Mad perform from a project management standpoint?

They do a great job of ensuring that our projects stay on time and on budget but are still flexible when it comes to scope creep. If something comes up unexpectedly, especially when you’re working with emerging technologies, they are very communicative so that everyone is up to date on and engaged with the progress that we are making.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Everyone on their team is 100% dedicated to our long-term success and extremely passionate about what they do. They have made every effort possible to provide us with the best products that they can, generally at no extra cost to us when it’s outside the scope of what we had agreed to.

That attitude of collaboration and commitment is something we appreciate very much and a major element of why our work with them has been so successful.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I don’t even have any constructive criticism to give them, we’ve been so satisfied with both the effort that they give to our projects and the final products that we end up with every time.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Because they are such a creative group, it’s important that you go into any type of meeting with clear focus. They’re not going to try to overhaul your product or make it theirs, but you need to be able to point that creative energy in the right direction in terms of getting what you want out of the product.

Once they understand what you want in return, they can take control of the process and really utilize their talents to the fullest extent to deliver a product that’s often better than you could even have imagined.