Custom Digital Health Software
Part consultancy part product lab, Vessel Partners has been shipping award-winning digital healthcare solutions for over a decade that drive long-term behavioral change and bend patient outcomes meaningfully towards better.
Through deep working relationships with healthcare companies, hospital systems, and academic institutions we have designed and built apps for patients that assist in chronic pain management, remote cardiac rehab, remote patient monitoring, lifestyle modification and behavior change, and other important aspects of care. We have also built provider facing applications that assist in clinical decision support, are integrated or embedded within EHRs, and are highly interoperable.
We can help you stand up new solutions or provide our services for deployment within your products. Some of our clients include: Mayo Clinic Health System, MedStar Health, The University of Minnesota, and Health Partners Health System.
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Portfolio
Medstar Health, Mayo Clinic, University of Minnesota, Fairview Health
Tapr App
Treating Opioid Addiction and Chronic Pain with Cutting-edge Healthcare Technology
For patients with chronic pain — and the doctors who treat them — tapering off of prescription opioids has presented numerous challenges.
Vessel Partners teamed up with MedStar Health, a leading health system in the Washington D.C. area, in an AHRQ-funded project to give patients and providers new tools to address the opioid epidemic.
The result is TAPR-CPM — a pair of apps, integrated with multiple electronic medical record systems (EMRs) which include:
Pain tracking using Computer Adaptive Technology (CAT) PROMIS measures
A body map to track the location of pain
Sentiment analysis to track their mood and subjective wellbeing
A way to track non-opioid pain management therapies
The ability to view trends in their pain and therapies over time
FHIR and SMART on FHIR data APIs for easier EHR interoperability
Clinical Decision Support
TAPR’s Clinical Decision Support Tool also provides doctors and clinicians with the information they need to create evidence-based tapering plans that reduce withdrawal symptoms and failure rates.
Using patient information about specific medications and needs the app provides recommendations for how to step down dosages over the right time period at the right rate based on a patient’s morphine milligram equivalent (MME). Tapering at the optimal pace is integral to success, so TAPR alerts clinicians if they attempt to go outside of evidence-based guidelines. Additionally, the app suggests alternative, non-opioid pain management therapies for doctors to prescribe, and ways to manage withdrawal symptoms.
Clinicians are able to monitor patient progress over time and provides clinicians with a timeline of the patient's taper including alerts if the patient's PRO scores have changed in a clinically significant way. At follow up visits, the doctor can then choose to slow down or otherwise alter the taper based on the patient generated data.
PRISM - Patient Reported Outcome Tool
Improving Patient-Reported Outcomes for Remote Patient Monitoring
Much of our modern healthcare system revolves around isolated patient visits, giving clinicians a limited view of patient health in their daily lives. Remote monitoring of Patient-Reported Outcome Measures (known as PROMs or PROs) can give clinicians a helpful window into a patient’s ongoing condition and recovery but adoption has been hindered by interoperability and usability issues.
The PRISM App
We collaborated with academic and clinical researchers at the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management and the Institute for Health Informatics, and Fairview Health System/HealthEast Kidney Stone Institute, to conceive of better ways to collect PROs for remote patient monitoring. Together, we formulated a strategy to increase the adoption of PROs through an easy-to-use web and mobile application called PRISM.
PROMIS has been used successfully in-clinic and won the AHRQ Step Up App Challenge. At achieve this, we started with a four-step human-centered design approach before beginning development.
Step 1) We conducted interviews with clinicians and other stakeholders to understand their needs
Step 2) We interviewed patients to understand their preferences
Step 3) Our team created an interactive prototype and conducted user testing with real patients in-clinic
Step 4) We iterated on the prototype for a total of four rounds of testing until quantitative and qualitative feedback told us that the product was highly usable and met the goals of the users
“This app is an innovative tool that will advance value- and person-centered care by ensuring that information generated by patients is a major driver in their care. PRISM will help overcome challenges in collecting and integrating standardized PRO data into health information technology systems.”
- Gopal Khanna, AHRQ Director
Reviews
the project
Patient-Facing Mobile App Dev for Medical Research Institute
“Vessel Partners is the right choice for small, medium, and large development projects.”
the reviewer
the review
A Clutch analyst personally interviewed this client over the phone. Below is an edited transcript.
Introduce your business and what you do there.
I’m a senior informatics scientist at a research institute. I’m the core lead for the research application development team.
What challenge were you trying to address with Vessel Partners?
We had a grant from a healthcare research association to understand the integration of patient-reported outcomes in primary care facilities using our organization’s site as a test bed for this pilot. We needed Vessel Partners' help for this engagement.
What was the scope of their involvement?
Our goal was to develop a SMART-on-FHIR (Fast Health Interoperability Resources) mobile app integrated with our electronic health record system. Vessel Partners built the entire UI and the actual mobile app for Android, iOS, and Linux.
We used the basic UI they created and did some minor tweaks to it. Vessel Partners then did the whole build process on the patient-facing side. On top of that, the team created a patient registration website where patients could get registered for the system.
What is the team composition?
I worked with 3–4 people from Vessel Partners, including Doug (Founder & CTO) and Zack (CEO).
How did you come to work with Vessel Partners?
Vessel Partners won a sponsored competition where organizations or people had to build a user-facing mobile app. They had the best design and were contracted for this specific engagement.
What is the status of this engagement?
The engagement lasted from January 2021–June 2022.
What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?
We reached our goals. Vessel Partners’ UI designs were fabulous, and the project was a massive success with the funding agency. In some ways, we managed to get more projects based on Vessel Partners’ expertise. Another success metric was the usability testing results of the UI — the end users loved it.
How did Vessel Partners perform from a project management standpoint?
Their project management was excellent. To communicate, we used emails and had a lot of meetings.
What did you find most impressive about them?
Vessel Partners’ depth of development knowledge was their differentiator. It was also easy working with them. They produced great results, so I’d recommend them to anyone interested in development.
Are there any areas they could improve?
No, there weren’t any.
Do you have any advice for potential customers?
Without question, Vessel Partners is the right choice for small, medium, and large development projects. They deliver on time and meet expectations.
the project
Mobile App Dev & Design for Research University
"They were great communicators; they adhered to timelines we set as a team."
the reviewer
the review
The client submitted this review online.
Please describe your company and your position there.
I am a professor at the business school of a large research university. As an academic institution, we work with many academic and industry partners, and collaborate on research as well as teaching related projects.
For what projects/services did your company hire Vessel Partners, and what were your goals?
We wanted to submit a project to the national Step-up-App challenge announced by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). The goal was to design an app that would allow for seamless collection of patient reported outcomes from the patients (for example how well the person is able to go about their daily activities, how well is their pain managed) and integrate this information to the electronic health records.
While such patient reported outcomes are critical in hearing the voice of the patient on their healthcare, to date they had been collected using paper surveys, making it difficult to integrate into care plans. We wanted to change that! I built and co-led Team PRISM - Patient Reported Insights System from Minnesota to compete in the AHRQ App challenge, and we worked with Zach and Doug in design and development of our app.
How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?
We reached out to Zach and Doug to collaborate with our academic team for the design/development of the PRISM app as a colleague of ours had worked with them before. They immediately connected to the importance of the problem we were trying to solve, and it was clear from the first meeting that they deeply cared to make a positive impact on healthcare. That was very important to our team.
Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.
The AHRQ Step-Up App competition had several phases. The first phase was to make a business plan and a proposed design for the app. Doug and Zach joined our team meetings, and we had multiple sessions figuring out the pain points and how we can address them with a mobile app. We also engaged with clinician team members and visited their clinics to understand their clinical workflow. We advanced to second phase as part of 10 finalist teams.
At this point, we worked closely to design the app, while conducting extensive user testing, iteratively improving the design. Our product ended-up being extremely user friendly and neat! We were selected as the 1st team nationally and as a result, we were teamed up with a large health system in Washington D.C. to pilot the app in 9 clinics and integrate to multiple EHR platforms. We successfully completed our pilots just before the pandemic started in March of 2019 and made our app available open source.
How many resources from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?
We primarily worked with Zach (CEO) and Doug (CTO), and some developers they hired.
Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?
Team PRISM - Patient Reporting and Insight System from Minnesota had multiple successful milestones. In addition to designing and developing a user friendly app to collect patient reported outcomes in clinics, our team received awards.
- 1st place win at a national competition
- the AHRQ Step-Up-App Challenge
- 2nd place win at the American Medical Informatics Association App Contest
- Successful pilot in 9 clinics (rural and urban) that are part of a large health system in Washington D.C.
- Open source dissemination of the software
Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timeliness.
Zach and Doug are wonderful to work with! They were great communicators; they adhered to timelines we set as a team; they always have positive contributions to the collaborative process in the team. They are hard workers with high commitment to the quality of work. Most importantly, they are passionate for improving healthcare.
What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?
They are excellent planners, and the work gets done timely, with high quality!
Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?
Our work on PRISM project was a little different in that we were part of a multi-phase competition advancing to the next phase as we pass the previous phase. As such, it was difficult to plan out an entire timeline and product deliverables. In an ideal world, we would have a more narrow project scope with clearer expectations on each feature of the product's design/development, and more frequent status updates/demos on product development. That said, what our team needed was a more flexible and nimble approach specific to the PRISM project, and Zach and Doug delivered that flexibility.
the project
Mobile App Dev for Healthcare Company
"We established a good weekly cadence along with multiple impromptu checkpoints that were beneficial."
the reviewer
the review
The client submitted this review online.
Please describe your company and your position there.
Our company is a national healthcare company that increases access and reduces the cost of expert mental health care for kids, teens, and families. Our founding team has been in both technology and healthcare for nearly twenty years, as individual contributors, and executives, in both private practices and at companies like Oracle, Optum and Teladoc Health.
For what projects/services did your company hire Vessel Partners, and what were your goals?
We needed to quickly get started on an application and for us, it was a quick way to ramp up with healthcare domain experts.
How did you select Vessel Partners and what were the deciding factors?
Vessel has been in healthcare for over a decade and are a solid and multidisciplinary group with pre-built assets along with expertise that reduces time to market.
Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.
The project scope was specific to clearly outlined deliverables, which did change slightly over time and were actually improved. Having partners with healthcare backgrounds is imperative for some decisions. There's a variety of tech built into the system along with APIs.
How many people from the Vessels Partners team worked with you, and what were their positions?
We worked with three to five different team members, including folks like Doug and Zach who run the operation. Working directly with the founders of the company goes a really long way.
Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?
The effort speaks for itself and we were able to get to market much more quickly and economically than alternative vendors and/or development decisions.
Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timeliness.
We established a good weekly cadence along with multiple impromptu checkpoints that were beneficial.
What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?
Their healthcare technical knowledge (ie PCI, HIPAA, integrations, etc.) and deliverable pre-built functionality to assist in common routines or operations was unique and helpful.
Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?
No
the project
Mobile App UX/UI Design for Healthcare Tech Provider
“Vessel Partners’ attention to detail and focus on the science behind app engagement and utilization is amazing.”
the reviewer
the review
A Clutch analyst personally interviewed this client over the phone. Below is an edited transcript.
Introduce your business and what you do there.
I am the CEO of Chanl Health, a technology provider for hospital systems focused on cardiovascular disease recovery.
We work with hospitals to provide a software platform, patient mobile app, and clinician dashboard to deliver virtual care after hospitalization.
What challenge were you trying to address with Vessel Partners?
We needed guidance on how to engage patients through our mobile app. We also needed help to streamline clinician workflows and processes and communicate them to patients.
Whatever company we hired needed to assist us on UX/UI design and experience handling the patient perspective on an app like ours.
What was the scope of their involvement?
Vessel Partners UX/UI design and development for our cross-platform mobile and web app. We provided them with initial design documents and details on our users.
Vessel Partners started the UX/UI work with a research and discovery process. They took the time to sit down with the patients and staff at two of our hospital partners over two months to understand the industry we work in.
They then did some iterative design work on the mobile app’s user interface and dashboard, balancing their design ideas and our workflow suggestions with user feedback. The mockups the Vessel Partners team developed went out to patients and users for additional feedback.
The app has launched, but Vessel Partners are still staying on as partners. They’re evaluating app usage and user interactions — this data will be used for future design updates.
What is the team composition?
I worked with two people, the software engineer and the lead designer.
How did you come to work with Vessel Partners?
I was referred to Vessel Partners by another organization I was working with — they had a detail-oriented approach to design. I thought their focus on user motivation and usage was unique.
I did evaluate other design groups, but Vessel Partners won the contract.
How much have you invested with them?
We’ve spent between $20,000–$40,000 with Vessel Partners.
What is the status of this engagement?
We began working together in July 2018 and our engagement is ongoing. The main project took about 16 months.
What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?
Vessel Partners’ work really helped us engage patients and contributed to sustained app usability.
One of the metrics we measured was the enrollment number of patients in a rehab program. After the launch, the enrollment numbers for some of our customers doubled — about 80% of those patients completed the program.
How did Vessel Partners perform from a project management standpoint?
Vessel Partners was very clear in communicating their progress and timing — we didn’t have set milestones to hit, but the Vessel Partners team was great at ensuring everything was well planned.
We used Trello for project planning, visualization, and management. We generally had in-person or video meetings.
What did you find most impressive about them?
Vessel Partners’ attention to detail and focus on the science behind app engagement and utilization is amazing. We were able to work through them to understand our users, what motivated them or was a barrier to use. We haven’t been able to find a firm like Vessel Partners anywhere else.
Are there any areas they could improve?
Nothing negative stands out, but perhaps they could have formalized the feedback they got from our customers and users so we can archive it for the future.
Do you have any advice for potential customers?
Potential customers need to give Vessel Partners access to their customers so they can fully understand the customer’s business and needs.
the project
Mobile App Dev for Healthcare Company
"I am most impressed with how in-tune the team is with the end goal."
the reviewer
the review
The client submitted this review online.
Please describe your company and your position there.
I am the Senior Scientific Director of the MedStar Health National Center for Human Factors in Healthcare. I am responsible for the research portfolio of our research team which currently includes more than 30 active projects with federal, foundation, and industry funding. My personal research portfolio is focused on decision making and health information technology solutions, public health informatics and analytics, and health information technology policy.
For what projects/services did your company hire Vessel Partners, and what were your goals?
MedStar Health partnered with Vessel Partners in a proposal to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality to design, develop, deploy, and evaluation an app to address Chronic Pain Management. Once awarded, the team had to create both a provider-facing and a patient-facing application. We chose to specifically target chronic pain management and opioid tapering. Vessel Partners contributed their expertise to the provider-facing app and was fully responsible for the patient-facing TAPR-CPM app under this AHRQ funded contract.
How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?
MedStar Health has an ongoing relationship with Vessel Partners. They are a trusted partner not only for executing technical development but for their contribution to science and their expertise in user-centered design, cognitive psychology, and behavioral economics. They are a pleasure to work with but are responsible, thoughtful, and committed to the project at hand.
Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.
The TAPR-CPM project took a design idea from conception to execution and including multiple stages including design (interviews, workflow analysis, etc. with stakeholders and end users), development (technical development for not only one site but considered interoperability for deployment within multiple EHR vendor platforms), deployment (including multiple end users including primary care providers, pain specialists, and orthopedic and sports medicine surgeons), and evaluation (application of the RE-AIM framework for a systems approach to evaluation).
Vessel Partners supported design and development of the provider application but led the patient-facing application including scientific discovery (interviews, design workshops, usability testing with patients) and development (technical development of a patient-facing app and hub technology which allowed for bi-directional communication between the patient and the provider apps for seamless communication between the patient and clinical care team).
How many resources from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?
Vessel Partners was a trusted collaboration on this project and we interacted with their leadership team, administrative team, scientific experts, and their technical experts. The entire team was involved from start to finish, participating in meetings with a regular cadence and available for ad-hoc meetings as needed.
Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?
We are currently evaluating the deployment of the TAPR-CPM app, looking at many factors like preference, performance, adoption, and usability. We have recently deployed the app so we only have preliminary findings on enrollment, usage, and performance metrics. With regards to general feedback, Vessel Partners has been a true collaborator throughout (and not just a contractor who delivered a product). They are invested in the work and involved in ongoing discussions about ways to optimize the app for the end-user and to ensure we meet the goals of the funder. They are responsive, flexible, and innovative as our project met pandemic related challenges and required innovative thinking to ensure success.
Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timeliness.
The Vessel Partners team has a dedicated project manager who is in constant communication with our research team. From an administrative perspective, they deliver everything as expected (contracting deliverables, invoices, etc) and are very response to any required edits. I could not ask any more from the entire team with regards to communication and timeliness.
What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?
I am most impressed with how in-tune the team is with the end goal. Their role is not just to execute the technical development of some idea. They are a partner from the very beginning - brainstorming potential solutions, investigating the root cause of the problem, working with stakeholders to understand their needs and limitations. Their products represent all of the work put into the design, completely user-centered design that take into account workflow, personalities, cognitive and physical limitations of the user, integration with provider-facing tools. They are equally excited about the work and are committed from day 1 as a partner in every phase.
Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?
Nothing to note. I have nothing but positive things to say about my experience with Vessel Partners and our engagement.
The app received praises from internal and external stakeholders; the design impressed both the funding organization and the end users. Vessel Partners managed the project excellently. They leveraged their deep development knowledge to deliver great results and meet the client’s expectations.