Product Updates

Introducing Patient Messaging

Providing tools for your patients to connect with you on whatever platforms they prefer is key to successful engagement. Many patients prefer to connect digitally to schedule appointments rather than traditional phone calls, so it’s important to offer an online option. Similarly, it’s critical for your communication platforms to offer multiple ways for your patients to connect with you.

Building a private messaging platform for healthcare isn’t an easy process. As a product team we had to consider security requirements including HIPAA and 42 CFR while not overlooking usability and design. Far too often we see patient messaging apps which were clearly built without the patient experience in mind.

The CaredFor, client-branded, messaging feature was modeled after existing messaging apps. We wanted our users to have instantly familiarity with the product, make it easy to create a message, and control notifications. By focusing on design and usability we’re able to drive higher adoption and ultimately improve our client’s communication with their patients.

From the web interface, administrators can easily search for the desired patient and create a message. In some cases we realize that a therapist or counsellor may need to include another staff member on a thread with a patient, so we included ways to add multiple recipients. These seemingly simple features, together, create a robust system for supporting your patients.

Additional features like images and links allow the patient and provider to easily exchange detailed information. Optional integrations with an EMR provide for a single system to manage and store all communication and allows for additional updates, like appointment reminders.

By adding patient messaging into the CaredFor app we’ve not only added a critical feature, but further streamlined the systems needed to support patients and alumni. Our platform is quickly evolving into a comprehensive solution for providers addressing substance use disorders (SUD).

Product Updates: Inspirations, Announcements, and Analytics

Adding new features can be a challenge for any company. With so many ideas, the tendency is to just start building, but without a strategy how do you know if you’re building the right features.

Our team has created 3 themes to help guide our product decisions and roadmap:

1. Continually incorporate feedback from end users and treatment centers as we review current features and develop new ones.
2. Alumni find immediate value from the app and it inspires them to use it as part of their recovery.
3. By using CaredFor, treatment centers are better able to support their alumni, leading to improved outcomes and increased referrals.

Here are some of the features we’ve been working since the beginning of the year:

Inspirations: Having a content strategy for engaging your alumni is critical for the long term success of your program. Your content strategy may include long form recovery topics, upcoming alumni events, conversations / topics, and our newly introduced inspirations.

Inspirations are quotes or graphics which are automatically posted to the stream. This feature offers another prompt for your alumni to open the app to read what’s been posted, comment on another post, or create a question for the group.

Announcements: Our clients have told us that it’s often difficult to communicate upcoming events or other information to their alumni. Email addresses may bounce and phone numbers change making the process of staying connected difficult.

Our announcements feature allows the treatment center to broadcast updates directly to their alumni who are using the app. When creating the announcement, admins can select a level of urgency which controls push notifications and the priority of in-app display.

Since your alumni are already connected and engaged with your branded CaredFor app, this feature provides you with a tool to enhance your current email and text-message campaigns.

Engagement: Do you ever wonder if your alumni are engaging with the content you’re creating or the email campaigns you’re sending? When working with our clients, we stress the importance of knowing how their alumni are engaging with their CaredFor app. Our analytics dashboard provides that information with easy to understand views.

Want to experience the CaredFor app as an alumni?

Download our app and “request access” to our demo alumni group. Here you can experience our core features and see how it can benefit your alumni. Once we’ve got your attention, we can setup a demo to talk about creating your own branded CaredFor app.

Product Update: Sober Birthdays and Conversation Starters

Sober Birthdays

Having a sober birthday is a huge accomplishment and being recognized for that milestone is equally important. Our sober birthday feature allows alumni to input a sober birthday and be recognized in the group on their anniversary. We understand that sometimes those dates change or you want that date to be private, so we’ve incorporated those controls for you alumni.

Conversation Starters

Engaging your alumni group around a specific theme or topic helps to create community. Using our conversations features, team leaders can create a conversation starter and alumni can post responses. Features like comments, reaction, and notifications help your alumni group to be reminded of and participate in the conversation.

How We Created Our 2017 Product Roadmap

Excitement, anticipation, and persistence are a few words that describe 2016 for the team at CaredFor. We launched CaredFor in June of 2016 and quickly got to work meeting with leaders in the addiction treatment space as we worked to gather feedback on our product. It was through those conversations and pilots that we were able to create the first version of our app and narrow our focus to help addiction treatment facilities connect, engage, and influence their alumni, leading to improved outcomes and increased referrals. We wanted to take some time to share our 2017 product roadmap with you and tell you why we believe CaredFor is a critical tool for your treatment center.

We founded CaredFor because we felt that support and encouragement is a critical component of the recovery process. As we started working with treatment centers and sharing that vision we began to explore how our software could help alumni as they continue their recovery post-treatment. We learned that alumni are self-organizing on platforms like Facebook, but treatment centers recognized the limits and concerns of promoting Facebook for alumni groups.

The result of those conversations was the first version of our app – a white-label app branded as the treatment center and used by their alumni to offer peer support and stay connected with the treatment center. Recovery specific features like inspirations, sober birthdays, and recovery topics help to focus the conversation to provide real value to those in recovery. The app is modeled after traditional social networking sites with posts, reaction, comments, replies, and notifications. Additional features like promoted posts, announcements, and event reminders help the treatment center better connect with their alumni. Our analytics suite tracks engagement with the goal of helping treatment centers identify those who are at risk of a relapse and those who are alumni ambassadors.

So far we’ve launched our app with several customers and they’re excited to be offering this tool to their alumni. Our clients believe this tool can help to:

• Provide alumni with a support network post-treatment
• Enhance alumni communication
• Promote recovery with alumni
• Create a tool to help alumni make referrals when necessary

As we build our product roadmap for 2017 we have 3 themes to guide us:

1. Continually incorporate feedback from end users and treatment centers as we review current features and develop new ones.
2. Alumni find immediate value from the app and it inspires them to use it as part of their recovery.
3. By using CaredFor, treatment centers are better able to support their alumni, leading to improved outcomes and increased referrals.

Our team believes we’ve just started this journey and know that by working with innovative partners we can create a product that makes a difference in the lives of those suffering from addiction.

Here’s Our 2017 Year In Review

2017 was a phenomenal year for CaredFor. We partnered with dozens of treatment centers and worked to support thousands of people in recovery.