At the heart of Medicai's success is its commitment to a friendly end-to-end user experience and a vibrant community of doctors. We sat down with Anca Radosu, Medicai's Customer Success Manager, to delve into the importance of user experience, our doctors community, and the collaborative journey of building our product together with them.
1. The User Experience Matters:
Q: Anca, why do you believe it's crucial for Medicai to provide a friendly end-to-end user experience? How does this enhance the overall impact of the platform for healthcare professionals?
Anca Radosu: I've been working for over 11 years with healthcare professionals, and if there's one thing I've learned about them, it's that they're incredibly busy individuals. That's why it's crucial for their valuable time to be used as efficiently as possible.
In the medical field, digital tools must make a positive first impression on doctors by providing help, rather than adding to their workload.
We're constantly working on improving the product because we know it's hard to acquire a user, but very easy to lose one. At Medicai, we're fortunate to have users who provide constant feedback, constructive suggestions, and friendly advice because they love the solution and recommend it to other doctors. It's usually a chain reaction- if the user's impression is positive from the first login, they'll quickly understand the benefits and will invite others to join the collaborative workspace. We're very proud to have reached over 16K users (doctors and patients) in less than 4 years. Personally, I'm proud that since we set up the Customer Success department in 2021, when we had only 300 doctor accounts, we've grown to over 6K doctor accounts, and from 3 customers to over 60 paying customers (public & private sectors).
2. The Power of Medicai's Community:
Q: Medicai gathered an incredible community of doctors. What makes this community unique, and how does it contribute to the continuous improvement of the platform?
Anca Radosu: Yes, indeed, we have an amazing community of doctors who have embraced digital change, primarily for the benefit of the patient. They collaborate with other physicians to reach a diagnosis as quickly as possible and provide the best treatment, without unnecessary delays. They have outstanding reviews from their patients. These doctors choose to quickly log in to the platform and review their patients' complete electronic records on Medicai, instead of waiting for the patient to come to the consultation with a CD or waiting for the CD to load. They are, first and foremost, humans, and then experts in their field.
We've built the public community to address the need for doctors to receive medical files in a digital way directly from patients, eliminating the use of multiple channels like WhatsApp, Facebook, as well as temporary solutions like WeTransfer, which are not compliant.
Our doctor portal supports doctors by enabling efficient triage based on their available time and urgency, while ensuring documents remain accessible and are not duplicated across multiple channels.
Doctors have used their public community page, placed it on their personal websites, on social media, or sent the link directly to the patient, encouraging them to choose this secury and easy-to-use route for their personal data transfer.
3. Building Together with Doctors:
Q: Anca, why is it important for Medicai to actively involve doctors in the development process? How does this collaborative approach benefit both the platform and the medical professionals using it?
Anca Radosu: From the very beginning, we believed it's crucial to collaborate with doctors in the product development process, and we continue to have a close collaboration with Dr. Sorin Ghiea - MSK radiologist, who has provided us with feedback on our DICOM Viewer, and with insightful ideas for new functionalities. He also recommended our platform to his colleagues, which gave us a good start into the market. As we grew, more feedback from clinicians followed, thus leading to product modifications. We didn't want to create a product solely for radiologists; we aimed to serve all doctors for multidisciplinary collaboration, without infrastructure barriers. And we succeeded thanks to the doctors who sometimes told us what we didn't want to hear and what was hard to digest.
At Medicai, we have a team of exceptional professionals, great people who believe in change enabled by technology, but... we're not doctors. We don't experience the pressures they face, except from the outside, we don't encounter the same problems as they do, which is why we're often surprised by their feedback. Even though we know them, even though we've been working in the medical field for so long, we still encounter surprises... we're never bored. And this helps us evolve. The perfect product doesn't exist, but we're determined to get as close to it as possible. For doctors, for patients, for clinics, and health systems alike.
4. Overcoming Technical Inconveniences:
Q: The process of building health-tech can sometimes be hindered by technical inconveniences. How does Medicai navigate these challenges to ensure a smooth and reliable experience for its users?
Anca Radosu: As I've mentioned, there's no such thing as a perfect product. Technical difficulties, often beyond our control, can arise, as well as minor bugs. However, once we identify them, we try to resolve them as fast as possible to ensure a smooth experience.
Since we started working with public hospitals, we've approached things differently, allocating more time for technical integration due to various external factors: local infrastructure, the number of devices available, and the connectivity of providers, among other technical specifications.
Additionally, doctors often use our solution from home, so we need to be available for them if they require assistance. We provide user support via chat and have an implementation team always available for clients (hospitals, clinics) for digital workflow-related queries or new training needs.
The Customer Success department is essential for an organized implementation within a well-established timeline, and it helps us continuously improve the product. Although the functionalities are the same for all clients, the workflows and solutions are customized to their needs and desires.
Therefore, it's crucial for the assigned Customer Success Manager to analyze current workflows and design new digital workflows that are easier to implement, based on the steps we've established with the internal implementation team.
Implementation duration varies from a few days to several months, depending largely on their pace. We're prepared with the necessary tools and proactivity, and the biggest challenge is to continually find new ways to collaborate more efficiently, and sometimes to overcome bureaucratic barriers, unfortunately. As a Romanian startup with a young team, we have the flexibility to overcome obstacles, and with our experience and expertise, we can now provide concrete examples and use cases to assist our future clients. This is our magic, our partners trust us, and communication is the best solution to make things even better.
5. Doctors Embracing Medicai:
Q: Anca, can you share some insights into how doctors are currently utilizing Medicai? What impact has the platform had on their day-to-day operations and patient care?
Anca Radosu: It's remarkable to see how much the Medicai platform has evolved to become essential for both doctors and patients. Thanks to Medicai, patients who didn't know where to turn have had access to a dedicated team of doctors in record time. A notable example is the case of patients suspected of PID (Interstitial Fibrosis), who received rapid diagnosis at the Center of Excellence of the "Marius Nasta'' National Institute, led by Conf. Dr. Irina Strâmbu, and more recently, at the Center of Excellence of Elias Hospital, led by Prof. Dragoș Bumbacea, after their medical records were reviewed via Medicai.
Multidisciplinary committees use a special workflow in Medicai, and digital pathways for oncological patients are now established in Filantropia and Neolife hospitals.
In hospitals, the impact of the Medicai platform lies in facilitating access to imaging in emergency medicine, surgery, neurology, pulmonology, etc. Doctors can access patients images directly from their phones, in real-time, even when the clinical staff doesn't have access to a laptop or are on the go.
In conclusion, the benefits are evident for both parties: healthcare specialists have a more efficient and organized workflow, and patients receive the best possible care. Clinics and hospitals that have chosen Medicai have provided their staff with a comprehensive tool that streamlines their work and brings financial benefits and satisfaction. We are delighted that these institutions have chosen to improve the healthcare system, and we hope that even more medical service providers will follow suit.
Conclusion:
In the ever-evolving landscape of healthcare technology, Medicai's dedication to a user-centric approach and collaboration with doctors sets a remarkable standard. Anca Radosu's insights shed light on how Medicai is not just a platform but a collaborative journey, where the alliance between technology and medical professionals propels the industry toward a future of enhanced patient care.
