I built an in-house experience design team that led the brand and UX design for seventeen early-stage startups in the AI-focused precision medicine space using artificial intelligence. My work on improving user experience, developing design and product strategies for businesses, and successfully launching companies and products led to the successful exits of six companies and the start of a $200M Precision Medicine Fund.
Designing for Precision Medicine
Joining a startup incubator has all the challenges of working as an in-house team and working for an agency. I joined a small group of designers primarily focusing on building brand materials for our early-stage incubator companies. I matured our design capabilities to become a full-service design studio to meet the needs of our startups from a branding and marketing perspective, as well as our user experience and research capabilities for in-house product development. As I understood how the in-house companies worked together to create an interconnected ecosystem of products and services primarily serving the healthcare industry, I made a design maturity plan to level up our current designers and bolster the team to include content design and UI engineering, rounding out our team and how we could best position ourselves to serve our in-house customers. Our customers included:
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Medstatix: a patient experience feedback platform to improve physician outcomes and service.
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Appmobi: a cybersecurity platform focused on real-time threat detection for an ecosystem of devices.
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Wylei: an AI-driven marketing platform that helps brands deliver personalized messaging and ad campaigns.
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SweetMotion: a Diabetes management app using predictive analytics to monitor BGL patterns.
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Powch: a patented crypto wallet integrated with other AVC companies.
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Fusionetics: an AI-driven performance improvement platform for sports medicine and rehabilitation therapy.
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Connexion Health: an immersive AI-driven physical therapy and performance improvement environment.
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Smart Health Innovation Lab: a clinical technology lab incorporating technologists, healthcare providers, and insurers to prove new therapies and devices.
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Clio Go: a mobile app care navigator for patients to connect with their primary care provider.
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Vitavista is an AI-driven medical imaging technology that optimizes images and analyzes images.
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Nanodyne Labs: a microfluidic sensor technology for capturing biometric data through non-invasive applications.
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And several in-house products and initiatives under NDA.
As part of the senior leadership team, I regularly met with our managing directors to discuss product design opportunities within our portfolio. I regularly pitched research activities and led design sprints to identify new opportunities with my partners in engineering, outside partners, and product management. My previous work with The Pennsylvania Academy of Family Physicians enabled Aspire Ventures to collaborate more effectively with physicians in their product ideation. As such, one in-house product from my concept pitches was a primary care navigator, connecting primary care physicians to patients through their mobile devices in a level of transparency and communication unheard of in modern patient portals. That concept would eventually become the Clio Go platform and mobile app.
18-Month Company Launch Program
When our managing directors wanted to develop a company launch program that would drastically shorten the time it took companies to go from idea to product, a significant emphasis was placed on developing the brand and product design practices so that new companies could launch with a wholly realized brand presence and well thought out, usable product.
With my team, we developed a playbook that detailed a series of practices, approaches, and activities to help build a company brand identity, design system, and product design work that enabled these companies to enter the market with a viable initial product/service. My team and I worked through the initial execution of this playbook with a company called SoftCGM, refining the activities to foster more collaboration with other components of the launch program, including engineering, product management, and marketing.
Maturing a Design Team
At Aspire Ventures, this was my first time developing a career framework for individual contributors. I reviewed several frameworks with help and suggestions from other design leaders at large global organizations and smaller niche agencies. I created a custom framework that laid out the required skills and demonstrable attitudes that would enable team members to align in their job growth at Aspire Ventures. This framework also outlined how a team member could successfully exit Aspire Ventures, join one of the in-house startups, and lead their work as an exited company.
During my time at Aspire Ventures, I promoted four out of six of our core team to senior members, with two exiting to lead the product design work at two companies.
Outcomes
During my tenure at Aspire Ventures, my team and I saw the successful exit of six companies: Smart Health Innovation Lab, Clio Go, Connexion Health, Medstatix, Wylei, and Appmobi. I could promote most of my team from early career individual contributors to senior-level contributors, while two members joined two of the exited startups. As part of the senior leadership team, my concepts, and presentations led to product improvements across our portfolio of companies, with one in-house product concept being the Clio Go, a care navigator and patient portal that sits on top of the health system’s current patient portal services. Through our work at Aspire Ventures, we launched a new $200M precision medicine fund in partnership with Lancaster General Hospital/UPenn Medicine.