Pitch Response: Palliative Care App ​

I chose to respond to this app because I really was so intrigued by the choice of problem domain. The points brought up about the stigma around discussing death, and the acceptance of death, reminded me of a book I read many years ago, "When Breath Becomes Air" by Paul Kalanithi: which is an autobiography written by a neurosurgeon in his final stages of lung cancer, and his experience with accepting pain, death, communicating with loved ones, and experiencing the patient side of healthcare.

Pitch Feedback: ​

Listening to the pitch, I was confused by the time the team discussed the proposed solution. From their previous slides, I understood the most pressing problem in palliative care to be the scarcity of resources (less than 1 in 5 people receive necessary treatment). Such, I didn't understand why those were selected over more pressing problems in the domain (of course the selected problem areas themselves are very important, I think it's just the framing of the pitch that did the app a disadvantage).

App Feedback: ​

I thought Arvind's feedback was super compelling: how can you make this app patient centric? Of the four stated features of the app, I'm not sure which of the features a patient would not feel burdened by.

• Wishlist: I am not convinced that a patient who avoids discussing their death and reaching out to family members would willingly update wishlists on this app.
• Diary: Similarly, I'm also not sure patients would feel safe writing down their most personal feelings/diary style in this digital form where there is also so many other things going on. I think if anything, addressing the mental health issues (e.g. rates of isolation-induced loneliness/depression) using prompted reflection posts could be helpful FOR the user.
• Messages: And then, maybe as Daniel said, have the caretaker (in the case there is one) be a main stakeholder in the app.

TLDR: ​

The app is in a very interesting domain, where any improvement is good. To improve the app, it is advised to check if the apps current planned features are desired by the target palliative care patients or even feasible in most cases.