QiiQ has reached a critical milestone in our journey as a health technology company: we have a first customer.

Crozer Health, a unit of Prospect Medical, operates four hospitals in Delaware County, PA.  They are facing impending reductions in their employment roster, which may impose even more stress on their already overloaded ERs. They’ve asked for our help.

We have been engaged to improve clinical workflow and patient experience by deploying and tuning our flagship product – the QiiQ Assistant.

Working in collaboration with physicians in the department, we will co-design product improvements, then pilot the solution to relieve Crozer Health’s front-line staff of administrative inefficiencies.

Workflow issues have plagued ER operations globally for over 30 years, getting worse by the decade. Covid has amplified the crisis. It fits the definition of a wicked problem. A sustainable solution is going to require an obsessively persistent collaboration between workflow experts, physicians, nurses, designers, engineers, administrators, IT experts, and economists.  That’s what we’re driving here, in baby steps. 
A few vendors (large and small) have made sincere efforts to solve particular portions of the larger problem. While the larger problem persists, some of these incumbent vendors (e.g. Nuance, MModal) have successfully delivered portions of the solution.  But so far, no-one has successfully tackled the bigger picture of workflow efficiency! Thus, we have our calling.
We have a unique head start:
  • we’re the only vendor building a virtual assistant specifically for the ER
  • we’re exploiting NLP as a core aspect of the user experience, for both access to functions (“show me my patient list”) as well for using those functions (“plot creatinine for the last 3 years”) or specifically for medical dictation (creating a patient note)
  • we’re starting with functions of our own creation (QiiQ Assistant as product), but will expand to include functions composed by other vendors (QiiQ Assistant as platform)
  • we’re starting on Microsoft’s Azure platform, using their native NLP (which will eventually be Nuance’s), but expect to become agnostic, allowing hospitals/users to choose which one they use (some people passionately prefer MModal over Nuance for medical dictation)
  • in transitioning from “QiiQ Lite” to “QiiQ Premium” the core UX doesn’t change; what does change is the array of functions available to the user.
We are focused on solving the ER workflow problem as effectively as possible, using the most suitable technologies.
There are a litany of messy constraints and prickly challenges to building that into a scalable business. In today’s world, any solution provider tackling this domain must practice artful craft in the process of building out a solution and business model. While the QiiQ team is committed to this contest, we know we cannot hope to succeed without the support and participation of lots of other people who know their way around this problem and solution space. If you’re reading this, and it speaks to you, please accept my invitation to reach out and have a chat:  info@QiiQ.Health.
Dave