MedApps: Our vision, mission and culture [Why should they matter to you?]
As a start up, MedApps has capitalised on the corresponding ‘clean canvas’ to envisage and create a clear vision, mission, and culture.
Far more than mere cliched statements sent down from a corporate high, since establishment, we’ve worked collaboratively to shape MedApps’ vision and mission into living, working infrastructure that supports our customers, business, and our team.
Like all great companies, we strive to hire passionate, growth mindset people.
Value adding to customers is a given.
Integrity, diligence, teamwork, communication, and innovation are implicit in how our culture presents each day.
All this may sound a little esoteric, which is why there is value in looking at what’s behind the MedApps vision, mission and culture – and why this is relevant for the people and organisations we serve.
MedApps’ vision
By improving clinician wellbeing and efficiency, we can improve hospital efficiency and patient care.
MedApps started with a clear focus: Improve the working lives of clinicians.
What does our vision mean for end users? At a very practical, hands-on level, it means making the right information accessible to the people who need it, when they need it. In hospital settings, this translates as fewer mistakes, improved patient outcomes, and happier people at work. Seeing the MedApps vision produce the tangible results we’d aspired to lends further impetus to our efforts from which new opportunities are identified.
For our team – we are constantly asking ‘will this help or hinder the clinician?’ and ‘how are we validating and testing this?’, ‘what other user groups / clinicians have the same challenge?’
In the near term, we expect MedApps to be adapted for other clinicians both inside and outside of the hospital setting.
We very much consider this to be a vision in action.
MedApps’ mission
Enabling relevant resources to reach the hands of clinicians, we strive to help every health professional feel capable, confident and efficient in their work.
The initial concept for Resident Guide* was born from the experience of Dr Rob Pearlman, company founder and CEO.
As a junior doctor, Rob faced the same challenge as most interns. Expected to rotate between hospitals and teams in months, he was to learn all local procedures, phone numbers, and referral pathways ‘somehow’.
An avoidable mistake caused Rob to consider how things could be done not just differently, but more effectively, so he – and others like him – could feel capable, confident, and efficient.
It is this desire to address shortcomings inherent in the system which laid the foundation for MedApps’ mission, and continues to drive it today as we deliver tools that improve clinicians’ working lives.
In practice, this means development of any aspect of MedApps passes through a filter: Is this resource relevant? Will it help the end user feel capable, provide a sense confidence or enable them to complete a task quickly and safely?
Moreover, tools and resources within MedApps are not limited to the clinical alone. Our users have access to a continually expanding library of content and tools that reflects the many dimensions of life as a medical professional.
Best practice orientation, engagement, change management, and quality improvement sit alongside resources to support personal wellbeing and organisational culture. Design and user experience continually evolve too, relying on direct feedback from our customers to make Med App better.
Consistent with research around JMO orientations1, when users can access what they need, when they need it (both online and offline), learning is enhanced, stress reduces, and patient care improves.
It’s outcomes like these which serve as drivers for our mission.
The MedApps culture
Taking care of healthcare workers, so they can take care of our loved ones, is an imperative for businesses like MedApps. In the wake of COVID-19, it’s a premise that holds true more than ever.
In an industry where our newest clinicians are plagued by high rates of burnout, compassion fatigue, and low job satisfaction2, we want to empower clinicians. Our ability to achieve that – including in clinical settings affected by the demands of COVID – is a direct result of the culture we’ve built. We’re focused on:
- Encouraging collaboration while respecting independence
- A structured approach to process and product management
- Evolving our offering based on lived experience, feedback, and research.
Our clinician-led Australian company is growing through the efforts of dedicated people working together, and a commitment to continuously build towards excellence. Our vision remains front and centre.
As a young company, we aim to strike a balance between respecting the autonomy of each team member, while providing support and promoting leadership.
For our customers and end users this means MedApps is dynamic. Improvements and changes are a direct result of feedback and lived experience, backed by research.
But MedApps’s culture goes deeper than that. Medicine’s four pillars of ethics guided us to subscribe to parity.org’s Parity Pledge. In effect, this means we’re making a demonstrable commitment to increase the representation of qualified women at the top of our organisation. Even as a small start-up, we’re doing what we can to close as many gaps as possible.
A final word about us
The MedApps team has almost doubled over the past 12 months. This coupled with the impacts of COVID-19, working remotely has meant we’ve needed to be even clearer and more specific about our vision, mission and values.
Our team is a hard-working and diverse group of people who are encouraged to bring their collective experiences and learning to solve challenges and realise opportunities in the hope of reaching our lofty goals. Over the past 6 months in particular we’ve identified the importance of growing our unique culture through fun, play, opportunity and clarity of role and focusing on outcomes. Our systems and habits (company and individual) provide a strong foundation for the company to improve each day, each week, each year.
People, potential, and possibility are not only words. They are what drive our actions.
Want to learn more about us? We want to hear from you. MedApps* is an offline-first downloadable app designed especially to support health professionals improve efficiency and wellbeing. If our vision, mission, and culture resonate with you, why not connect with us on LinkedIn and Twitter?
*Available on the App Store for iOs and Google Play for Android.
- Mulroy, Seonaid, et al. “What do junior doctors want in start‐of‐term orientation?.” Medical journal of Australia 186.S7 (2007): S37-S39
- Markwell, Alexandra L., and Zoe Wainer. “The health and wellbeing of junior doctors: insights from a national survey.” Medical Journal of Australia 191.8 (2009): 441-444.
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