REKALL

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the co-founder and director of Litmus Health. We’re a health IT company that provides an infrastructure to pharmaceutical companies to support their clinical trials and research. In particular, we help clients make sense of real-world evidence. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with REKALL?

We’d just built our MVP, which was enough to secure our first customer but wasn’t ready for enterprise-level clients. REKALL came in to architect and build the solution with all of the bells and whistles. 

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement? 

REKALL built a data streaming platform that can intake a high volume of high-velocity data from different sources. The solution parses and shapes data into a normalized format, which allows our database to stay extremely well-organized. At any moment, a researcher can download their data into their notebook of choice (usually R or Python) and start doing machine learning (ML).

More recently, we’ve been working on an off-the-shelf integrated ML and AI component that does more of the data processing work for our customers. The more we can prepare the data on our end, the more fun the customer experience is for our researchers.

What is the team composition? 

We have a 3–5 person team that functions as our technology department. That includes a CTO role, a platform development lead, and a mobile development lead. Different team members have joined the project during different stages, including a data scientist and more. 

How much have you invested with them?

To date, it’s been about $1 million.

What is the status of this engagement?

We’ve started working with them in October 2018, and the work is ongoing. Although, they’ve actually advised us on our project planning as early as January 2018. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We’re over the moon with REKALL’s work so far. In general, pharmaceutical companies are averse to working with newer companies like ours because the product being pitched isn’t usually enterprise-grade. 

It’s a big deal to have a top 10 pharmaceutical company inspect our product and deem that it’s fault-tolerant, fully compliant, and mature. We’ve also had a third-party security and compliance company audit the platform, and they’ve found no issues.

Now, most of our work involves roadmap planning. We have an upcoming strategy summit with REKALL to dream big and plan out a roadmap to capitalize on our product’s foundation. I can’t wait to do exciting things that have never been done before.

How did REKALL perform from a project management standpoint?

REKALL’s project management is flawless — they’ve been the best outsourced technology experience of my career. They’re always harder on themselves than I’ll ever be, so I never feel like I have to check on their work. If something is not up to their standards, they’ll push themselves to get it right.

As for our deadlines, we only miss our schedule when the customer increases the scope of work, which is a good thing. A big part of that is because REKALL’s team has worked on versions of what we’re doing before, so they aren’t learning on the fly. If anything, they’re improving on the architectures that they’ve seen before. That kind of talent is rare for consultancies at their size and price point.

The team uses Trello, Slack, and Google Docs to collaborate, which works well for them. 
 
What did you find most impressive about them?

Dominiek (Co-Founder & CTO) is adept at understanding how our technology intersects with all other parts of our company. Not only does he functionally serve as our CTO, but he can also participate in business, sales, and compliance meetings. 

It’s a holistic conversation that also takes into consideration medical compliance and legal issues — both huge parts in the pharmaceutical world. That’s why we’ve never felt like they’re creating technology for technology’s sake. I don’t have to bring them up to speed or take their advice with a grain of salt because they have that business sense.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Take advantage of their services and expertise. They’re a top-notch team at a high price-point, so it’s a golden opportunity. You need to be clear on what you’re going to build and identify a realistic North Star. 

We already had early customers, advisors, and an MVP when we approached REKALL, so we were ready to fly when we started developing our product. Thanks to that clarity, we’ve been able to outpace our competitors and even big pharma companies with in-house teams. We’re now waiting for the market to catch up to us a bit.