The Journal My Health app, a digital health journaling app, was the brainchild of Chariot Solutions’ CMO, Tracey Welson-Rossman. 20 years ago, Tracey survived a car accident, but was left with chronic pain. She quickly learned how important – but challenging – it was to track her new symptoms and communicate them with her care team.
Enter COVID 20 years later. Upon hearing the stories of countless COVID ‘long-haulers’, Tracey saw a need to help these patients track their uncharted symptoms and navigate this new chronic condition. She remembered that health journaling had helped her on her own health journey, and wanted to create an app for those with long haul syndrome – and other chronic conditions – to do the same.
To create the app, she turned to Chariot Solutions. The team at Chariot, led by CTO Aaron Mulder, worked with Tracey to bring the Journal My Health app to market in 3 months. Working with minimal budget, and an unwillingness to make complex decisions based solely on assumptions, their biggest goal from the start was to get the app to market. Only then would they be able to answer the big questions: Did the idea have legs? Would the app be adopted?
In this interview, Tracey and Aaron talk about the business and technical choices that were made to speed the app’s release, the role of compromise in decision-making between a product owner and the technical team, and the importance of setting benchmarks in the product’s lifecycle to check in on the data, make critical decisions, and pivot as needed.
In the end, Tracey and Aaron agree: be intentional about your build, every step of the way.
Links
- Chariot Solutions has partnered with startups and Fortune 50 companies alike for over 19 years to turn ideas into lean software solutions. Learn more about our mobile work.
- To start a digital health journal of your own, download the Journal My Health app (it’s free!)