The team of brilliant founders Charlie, Elin and Alex explain how Salve app is changing fertility treatments and why is patient health data privacy an important aspect of it.
1. How did the idea for the Salve app emerge?
A close friend works in fertility and told me how broken communication was between the clinic and patient. Doctors and nurses in our network reiterated the same thing across different areas of healthcare. We spent 6 months immersing ourselves in the healthcare space. Quite literally sat in hospitals and clinics analysing the huge number of calls the clinics receive from patients going through treatment. Many of the questions were the same, and so Salve was born. A better way to educate and inform patients and give them the best chance of a successful medical outcome.
2. In what way is Salve app changing fertility treatments as they existed to date?
Fertility treatment is an involved process. Patients might expect to inject drugs 5 times a day, visit the clinic once a week for a variety of procedures and all the treatment info is given to them in a big stack of paper. This isn’t the most conducive way to engage a patient and typically they google the answers to lots of questions leading to conflicting sources of information.
When a patient logs into Salve it automatically shows them all their treatment information for the days/weeks ahead. What drugs to take, when to take them, when their appointments are, how to prepare etc. If any questions do slip the net, we have a secure messaging service through to the nursing team which means they can get answers in 30 seconds rather than waiting on hold for 20 minutes to speak to someone.
It’s all about delivering healthcare to the patient when and where they need it.
3. Why is patient privacy an important element of the Salve app?
Fertility treatment information is a sensitive topic and we take the security of our users’ data very seriously. We store our data with Amazon Web Services, a secure cloud service based in London that is NHS compliant. We’ve ensured our privacy and security policies are NHS and GDPR compliant so we can put both our customers (clinics) and our users (patients) minds at ease when they’re using our service.
