During the pandemic, the app's founders volunteered thousands of hours at hospitals and listened to the stories of frontline workers, realizing that over 60% of Healthcare workers experience burnout, which increases the chances of errors in patient treatment.

Team Vitalize proposed an easy-to-access mental health support system in the form of a mobile app for healthcare professionals that could help them take care of their mental well-being.

Anuyat’s team of consultants understood the sensitivity of the idea and suggested developing an MVP to validate the idea in the real-world.

Challenges

The vision of Vitalize app was noble but highly complex

• The major challenge was finding the exact concise plan, layout, dimensions, and features to be included in the app based on what would be best accepted by the highly trained and efficient healthcare community.
• Mental health is a broad area of concern with multiple causes and effects. The app wanted to focus on a specific aspect, and the challenge was to understand the exact needs for mental wellness due to intensive burnout of healthcare workers.
• The anonymous use of some of the features by clinicians was of utmost importance; hence, all the other functions of the app must adhere to this rule to maintain the integrity of the entire application.
• During the debut launch of the app, there were urgent development requirements from the client's end to accommodate custom needs of the hospital.

This challenge was overcome by planning a short sprint to develop the features and running the entire application with rigorous quality assurance tests.

About the Client

Vitalize Care is backed by YCombinator, Startup Health, Telosity Ventures, and founders of top digital health startups. Vitalize was started by three Co-founders - Veeraj Shah, Sanket Andhavarapu, and Nikhil D’Souza.

The idea was incubated at the University of Maryland, where Veeraj and Sanketh came together and used their keen observations about the need for mental care for clinicians. They both had been volunteering as caregivers and in other roles to help those needing medical attention.

Using their on-ground practical understanding and Nikhil's experience in technology, they developed the basic framework of this mobile app for healthcare.

The Product

The product (Vitalize Care app) addresses the concern of burnout and loneliness, which more than 60% of Healthcare Workers are experiencing, leading them to leave the job within 2-3 years of the tenure, resulting in inadequate availability of staff to handle patients’ needs.

• Vitalize care app's core feature is group coaching, where healthcare workers connect to a live coaching session with other peers.
• The exclusive feature of anonymity protects the user's identity, while they can continue chatting with their peers and coaches using pre-set voice modulations.
• One of the important features offered by this app is the on-demand guided meditation that will help healthcare workers in dealing with real-life stress factors like grief, loneliness, self-blame, and anxiety.
• Vitalize care app offers a holistic approach for the grief management of healthcare professionals.
• The analytical feature helps organizational leadership unlock insights on mental health trends and drivers of burnout on a departmental level.

The Design

We covered user experience typography, colors, icons, layouts, and wellness-stimulating imagery, backed by atomic design system philosophy to reduce the wireframing time.

This aids the easy development of new products, increasing speed-to-market, and also reduces defects in front-end code due to consistency within the system.

Why Anuyat

• Experience in project management & short-sprint planning

Anuyat has well-planned resources to carry out a short-sprint plan for critical applications and industries such as Healthcare.

• Leading MVP development

Anuyat has been working on providing quality MVP since its incubation. Projects like Vitalize care can be well-executed using the minimalistic and viable nature of MVP.

• Supporting the complex nature of the application

Anuyat’s team knew that the app should cover all the sensitive aspects in the form of features, and be user-friendly, and pleasing, despite its complex nature.

Our experience paid off as this product is welcomed by most healthcare employers and the number of users is increasing exponentially.

Development & technologies used

We have used React JS and React Native along with JavaScript for web and mobile applications. For the backend, NodeJS and ExpressJS were preferred.

Performance & Product Achievements

Vitalize Care has been well accepted by healthcare employers from all corners of the world and has been awarded & recognized by renowned organizations.

• It got first rank in TiE DC Pitch Fest 2022, and the team won the Best Pitch Award for the app at TiE Global Summit 2022 in Hyderabad.
• It won $5,000 in the venture track category at the Do-Good Institute’s 10th annual Challenge on April 21, and also took home the $1,000 audience choice prize during one of the events. (Achieved in Terp Startup, a summer accelerator program for student entrepreneurs hosted by the Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship).
• The startup got backing from YCombinator in Feb 2023.