Start.cat

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Research and admin assistant of a biomedical research institute

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Biomedical research institute with mainly public funding

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Start.cat to accomplish?

• An smartphone app for follow-up of children and adolescents living with asthma, connected to a platform where pediatricians and researchers could follow their results and contact in case of need.
• A smartphone app for patients living with prostate cancer, primarily thought to inform and help in shared decision making regarding treatment, but also allowing to track progress of quality of life changes through time.

SOLUTION

How did you find Start.cat?

• Referral
• Call for proposals

Why did you select Start.cat over others?

• Pricing fit our budget
• Great culture fit
• Good value for cost
• Referred to me

How many teammates from Start.cat were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

1. ARCA APP: This app is for children and adolescents who live with asthma, who are a cohort within the ARCA study. The app sends them specific Health-Related Quality of Life questionnaires at specific intervals, SMS prompts and reminders for completing them, and basic follow-up questions for the minors to inform of their asthma management. In case of an exacerbation (an asthma attack), they inform the team through the app and a trained interviewer phones them to collect information on how it happened and how they reacted, plus the paediatricians ate informed through the medical follow-up platfom connected to the app, which shows their patients' colour-coded results. As an e-health app, it follows strict ethic committees' rules and accomodte all Spanish and European legislations for this sort of app. This app has been in use for almost 10 years, and in 2027 we are going to go though a big update after achieving new funding for the project.
2. SHARED DECISION MAKING APP: Prostate cancer patients have to make a decision amongst several, very different, therapeutic options or the possibility of an active surveillance of the tumour, with no intervention until needed. We are developping an app to help patients understand their conditions and their options, and help them form an informed shared decision on the next steps in their process. This is through a glossary of medical terms, descrition and comparison among the most usual treatment options, health-related quality of life questionnaires to track any changes, and a personalised risk prediction for each treatment option if they wish to create a profile with their clinical information. As an e-health app, it follows strict ethic committees' rules and accomodte all Spanish and European legislations for this sort of app. It is currently under development, wiht out scientific team and SmartCat's technical team working toghtly together.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

Our ongoing project since end of 2016, live since 2017, has a high rate of children, adolescents, and some young adults still participating in the study thanks to this app, as well as the computer-assisted telephone interviews that are parallel to it. We have been able to study how different asthma management options, and specifically how the correct use of asthma inhalers, have evolved and affected these yougsters' quality of life.

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

Yes, their deliveries are timely and they adapt when our team has periods of time where we cannot devote much work to the app development process and ask them to advance in specific issues.

During the 10 years we have been collaborating, they have understood the importance of keeping the original e-health app and platform alive and well until we had funding for a new, up-to-date app. This was very important so as not to lose the follow-up of over 300 youngsters in the study.

What was your primary form of communication with Start.cat?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

We managed to create exactly the type of e-health tool we needed, with really user-friendly app for the children and adolescents, without becoming 'childish' or condescending, and also really useful platform for the paediatricians and researchers, covering all our needs. We are now in the process of creating a new tool for a totally different audience and are working together at a pace that we dictate, depending on our research and administrative needs, and are looking forward to the new version of our origial asthma tool next year.

They ahve also understood the complications of competitive public funding of studies, and adapt their timelines in preparation for grant results.

Are there any areas for improvement or something Start.cat could have done differently?

There was a specific period of time, when we were not actively working on any improvements or new implementations, when contact became difficult, we understand it was due to changes in the company. This was only for a period of a few months, and has since been no problem at all.