To New Beginnings
Each of us, as we have moved through the anniversary of the pandemic, can reflect on the enormous impact it has had on our personal and professional lives. While in some parts of the world we are starting to look up and forward, others are still experiencing disruption and we are all living with some degree of uncertainty as we move into a new normal.
For us at Tickit Health, we are grateful for the strength and resilience of our team, and the relationships we share with our customers. We have seen tremendous examples of leadership from you as you have asked us to adapt our tools for new situations, to better connect with your communities, addressing new workflows or new issues such as racism, restorative justice, or the personal impact of COVID to name a few.
We are seeing the benefits of Digital Empathy embedded in our tools across many sectors, in serving Indigenous populations, to quality and safety and patient experience engagement. Through our various partnerships we have broadened our scope of services beyond adult health in the area of child and youth health. Our tools are now found in social services, hospitals, community health centres, school-based health clinics and more.
We have lots of exciting news to share with you that you will read more about in this issue including the recognition of Dr. Sandy Whitehouse, our Co-Founder and Chief Medical Officer who was included in the Forbes listing of Top 52 Female-Led Start-ups Driving The Future of Health Tech and FemTech. Her passion, creativity and thought leadership have helped us steer our ship into new territories. You’ll also read more about other members of our team in our A Day in the Life Of… of series. In this issue, you can learn more about Claire le Nobel, our Product User Interface and Marketing Designer.
Recently we launched a podcast series called Empathy HIT on HealthcareNow Radio. Listen in to insightful conversations as this podcast explores Digital Empathy in healthcare. On the show, host Dr. Sandy Whitehouse, chats with providers, partners and industry leaders on topics ranging from patient experience to social determinants of health to rethinking how we collect information critical to improving health outcomes. You can listen to our first two interviews here with Dr. Jennifer Salerno with Possibilities for Change, and Michelle Westin, with Black Creek Community Health Center.
Also just launched is a new web site that showcases our successes in the market. We encourage you to stay connected with our online presence and to see the revamped look and feel of our brand.
Finally, we are proud to announce our partnership with Respectful Ways who won the RFP by the Joint Power Committee for all schools in the State of California. As a registered vendor of Social Emotional Learning assessments, we are excited to bring our Digital Empathy framework to the evaluations that align with Respectful Ways Trauma-Informed learning modules.
Stay tuned as we share more news on the company in the Fall issue of our newsletter.
Solution News
Better Data-Driven Decisions
Our product team listens to you, and aims to accommodate your needs to increase operational efficiency. Over the last quarter, we continued to focus on two core principles around improving actionable data and enhancing our trademark design.
Improving actionable data access is achieved through adding single touch analytics for organizations to make better data-driven decisions, particularly for subpopulations within the data set captured. Organizations can now:
- see the breadth and diversity of their populations in the different clinical settings they serve. The subpopulation demographics report segments data by account, survey, date range, and demographics filters.
- save resources by focussing care and tailoring interventions to particular subpopulations at highest risk through a filter by impact question. You can create targeted new programs based on your population’s real needs.
- have a powerful snapshot measure of objective outcomes, which is useful to justify funding initiatives through demonstrating risk reduction over time for high risk subpopulations
Enhancing our trademark design improves the user experience, gathers higher fidelity data and sees increased completion rates. Digital Empathy uses the core principles of empathy – compassion, cognition, and emotion – in designing technology to enhance a person’s experience. The Survey App has evolved with new beautiful rounded corners, shadows to create elevation hierarchy, and outlines on most interactive components.
A Day in the Life Of…
Claire le Nobel is the Product User Interface and Marketing Designer at Tickit Health, responsible for designing the Digital Empathy experience for the company’s tools and marketing collateral. Her typical day includes all things design: curating user journeys, colour themes, and images that ensure Tickit tools feel Digitally Empathetic. On the marketing side, Claire designs assets that communicate what Tickit Health does as an organization.
The highlight of Claire’s job is collaborating with others and using participatory design to co-create with clients, end-users, and researchers, to ensure all voices are heard throughout the design process and that end results are inclusive and meet client needs. Her top priority is advancing the Digital Empathy Design Framework, which she refines and develops using design research. Many hours are spent advancing the Tickit UI and UX through researching and prototyping with colour, typography, illustration, and user journeys.
Before she jumps into her day, Claire kick starts her morning with a solid breakfast and strong coffee. She wakes up early and savours her time getting ready for the day ahead. In the evenings, Claire winds down with a walk, TV show, or a glass of wine. In her down time, Claire listens to music and digs for cool records, plays tennis, gardens, and spends quality time with family and friends. An interesting fact about Claire is that she used to be a radio host in Victoria and Los Angeles; she hosted music shows with a broad range of genres and occasionally interviewed artists, which helped her practice public speaking.
When asked how she arrived where she is today, Claire will cite a strong desire to create change with her practice. She believes design isn’t simply about making products beautiful and consumable, but rather is a powerful tool for creating opportunities for clients to access the support they need.
Claire’s mantra for success is to understand the “why”. Answering that question helps avoid designing for design’s sake, and better prioritizes our clients and goals.
Tickit Health in the News
Tickit Health continues to be recognized for the great work we, and our clients are doing, and how that is progressing communication for better outcomes. In the past quarter that has resulted in some pretty significant attention.
First off was a story in the June/July issue of Canadian Healthcare Technology (CHT) which was the result of interviews with our CMO and clients King County (Washington) and Bayshore HealthCare (Canada). Entitled Tickit Health uses emotional intelligence and trust to uncover problems in patient populations, the article talks about the Tickit Health’s beginnings and successes, citing these clients’ reasons for using the Tickit solution.
Also in the news, HealthcareITtoday.com published a provocative opinion editorial on the convergence of education and healthcare as siloed industries. The oped talks about the similarities between the two industries and how examples are demonstrating that they can become powerful allies in improving the mental and physical health of future generations, rather than continuing to operate in silos. They both, afterall, have an interest in meeting the emotional and mental needs of youth.
In our latest blog instalments, you can read about our Digital Empathy Design Framework which follows on the heels of a recent series by Eric Gombrich, explaining the benefits of Digital Empathy. This latest blog looks at how using a Digitally Empathetic Design Framework can help address issues of inequity, stigma, and data accuracy and provides insight on where Digital Empathy excels in the ability to identify “silent” students, revealing issues that might otherwise go unnoticed. You can read the full blog here. In yet another blog from Eric Gombrich – who also serves as our Chief Privacy & Security Officer – he discusses privacy and security and ends his blog with an interesting call to action: “If protection of your data is important, take time not just to ask the simple question of your vendor if they have privacy and security in their solution, but whether they have been independently audited and can you see the findings”.
As we mentioned in our introduction, Tickit Health recently launched a new monthly podcast series with HealthcareNow Radio which sees our own Dr. Sandy Whitehouse, MD, CEO & CMO, hosting insightful conversations with clients, industry and partners on topics ranging from patient experience to social determinants of health to rethinking how we collect information critical to improving health outcomes. The latest podcast is with Michelle Westin, senior analyst with the Black Creek Community Health Centre. In the podcast, they discuss using technology to help build stronger communities through the delivery of comprehensive health services and programs that enhance community health and well-being. This is the second in a series with a podcast channel that can be found in over 45 platforms including Apple Podcasts and Google Play that helps drive engagement and plays through marketing, promotion and social media activities and outreach to their Answers Media Network audience.
In addition, Dr. Whitehouse was included in the Forbes listing of Top 52 Female-Led Start-ups Driving The Future of Health Tech and FemTech. Her passion, creativity and thought leadership have helped us steer our ship into new territories.
Earlier in the year, Eric Gombrich published additional blogs that explored themes from several recent podcast and video interviews held with StartUp Health, Passionate Pioneers, and Divurgent. He discussed potential flaws in traditional patient interviewing and surveying processes; how healthcare and education organizations are rethinking the way they collect information from individuals; and how they can more effectively and accurately gather data to improve health and other outcomes, using Digital Empathy.
And finally, in case you missed it, Tickit Health was recognized as a technology growth leader in the 2021 Emerging Rockets list for the Digital Health sector. Ready to Rocket is a business recognition program that profiles British Columbia technology companies with the greatest potential for revenue growth.
Client Success Stories
The Family Medical Center of Michigan is a federally qualified health center (FQHC) that, as part of its mandate, provides care to youth through services in local schools. FMC had used traditional outreach methods to engage students on issues of physical and mental health such as face-to-face interviewing and basic surveying. The Medical Center determined that, based on the number of referrals it was receiving from the schools, many students who probably needed help were not coming forward. In 2019, FMC enlisted Tickit Health with the goal of more effectively identifying those youth in need of support.
FMC required a better method of connecting with students—one that could be used on an ongoing basis to identify their challenges related to physical and mental health, including substance use and personal safety. By giving students a more relevant, comfortable way to communicate, FMC believed more would respond, and with greater honesty.
The results were clear; Tickit was able to identify students who were experiencing issues but were not verbalizing or sharing them previously via interview or questionnaires. Based on this, deployment accelerated rapidly —in the case of the first Check Yourself deployment, for example—the volume of submissions steadily climbed in subsequent rollouts.
Read the full article here.
The Benefits of Digital Empathy
Tickit Health’s data collection platform is unique from other online assessment or survey tools in its ability to recognize and overcome communication barriers related to literacy or cultural and socio-economic differences. Four pillars of empathy– engage, entrust, encourage and empower – are embedded in every solution. The goal is to close critical communication gaps, in terms of quantity and quality of information obtained. The platform is built to gold standard encryption and security protocols and complies with leading privacy standards. It also includes APIs so that any data collected can be exported to other systems, such as EMRs, CRMs or learning management systems. This infographic shows some benefits and returns reported by our clients from using Digital Empathy.
Stay tuned for our next newsletter where we will continue to share our stories. If you have an idea for an article, please send to info@tickithealth.com.