Written by Loes Vecht MD, 20 April 2021
A weighing scale. My welcome gift on day one of joining Luscii. With snacking in my top three favourite activities, I wondered in despair if the welcome gifts were personalised.
But no: the scales are integrated with our Luscii app, just like the blood pressure and heart rate monitors. Both devices are used by many patients who receive remote support through us, for example, patients with heart failure. Our remote monitoring for heart failure was one of the first programs to be launched, just like the one for COPD. Luscii had just taken off thanks to the Corona Check. This was six months ago.
Luscii Lego box
Corona made sure that Luscii had to adapt quickly and be flexible. A technical development of the product had just been completed, which allowed Luscii to function as a Lego box: the base is set and different measurement values (Lego bricks) can be added on top. This came in handy to offer a solution amidst the Corona frenzy and in creating the Corona Check as a triage app. But the possibilities of the Lego box are immense: it offers the opportunity to develop a tailor-made program for every condition. We provide the software and the knowledge from the development of the app to the implementation, while the healthcare providers add the knowledge about the medical content and their hospital.
And so I got to build. Build with doctors and nurses in hospitals across the country. Questions I asked and what came up in brainstorming sessions: Where in the current care path are we going to use Luscii and why? What impact do we expect to make? Which medical values do you need from your patients at home? What is considered an abnormal value? And if an abnormal value is detected, what then? Do we send an automated message with advice, does the patient automatically switch to another program with more questions or do you video call him/her?
I switch between projects that take three months to rapid response processes where we build the programs and go live in two weeks.
7 new programs in six months’ time
And it works! We are growing: in six months’ time, I helped to build successful apps that are now live for asthma, lung cancer, macular degeneration (retinal wear), IBD (inflammatory bowel disease), chronic sinusitis, cardiac rehabilitation and peritoneal dialysis. Currently, I am helping to build for diabetes, menopause, kidney transplants and eczema, among other things. How cool is that?!
In addition, we continue to optimise and expand the product itself. I am responsible for figuring out how we can arrange the self-care within the app to stimulate patient self-management as much as possible. We focus on lessons with videos explaining diagnoses or treatments. We can send automated messages with advice based on the submitted values. Since recently, we can also display a personal treatment plan within the app or refer to other apps/websites.
Why am I telling you this?
I just really love working on such projects day in, day out. Patients score us 4.6 out of 5 in their reviews. We help healthcare providers care for more patients in a growing patient population. That is certainly exciting yet demands adjustments. But we do that together! When I see what we have achieved in six months’ time, it makes me look forward to the future even more.
And my scales? When every new program goes live, we send a cake to the team in the hospital that took part in the development. It would be silly not to celebrate with them from a distance.
Together with a colleague, I developed a Luscii Fit program for all Luscii employees. Via the app, we can keep track of ourselves on both a physical and mental level. Naturally, this includes automated motivational messages: for every new program that goes live, the advice is to take the race bike out for a spin.
About the author
This article was written by Loes Vecht. Loes is a Medical Doctor and moved to work as a strategy consultant in healthcare for the past 4 years. She joined Luscii in October 2020 as an Impact Specialist & Chef Special. This means Loes is responsible for increasing impact for hospitals & patients and for developing new Luscii programs & specials. Loes loves to pioneer, just start & continuously evaluate & evolve together. And cycle racing too.
