Remedium: Improving Outcomes for Chemotherapy Patients

This blog is authored by the LaunchX 2020 Team Remedium, a Data and Tech startup in this year's Cohort A whose web app for chemotherapy patients seeks to improve treatment outcomes by improving communication about side effects between doctors and patients. -

Here at Remedium, we strive to improve the experience, efficiency, and outcomes of chemotherapy care.Thousands of chemotherapy patients receive inaccurate treatment because doctors misunderstand their side effects between appointments. Remedium provides an easy-to-use web app that improves treatment outcomes by sending real-time synthesized data to doctors when needed. Users can log any side effects they are experiencing, view their charts of inputted data, and communicate with their doctors. See our intro video below:

The concept for Remedium came together after spending hours on a Google Meet call, when one member brought up the problem many of us have faced: going to a doctor’s appointment with no recollection of your symptoms and thus, giving doctors vague statements that don’t benefit either party. We all had personal experience with this problem, and the idea clicked for us. From the brainstorming process, we knew we were all interested in the health, safety, and education industries. Also, each of us had connections in the medical field and knew people who needed something like Remedium, so it seemed like the right idea to pursue. After doing market research and getting feedback from instructors, interns, mock board mentors and fellow students, we narrowed our customers and identified a real, burning need. Currently, we are making and testing our prototype with previous interviewees.

What We've Learned So Far

Throughout our startup process, we’ve learned a lot. Here are the three biggest takeaways we’ve learned so far:

• Focus on understanding the problem. Doing interviews and research online was crucial to find competitors, understand the customer demographic, and — most importantly — figure out if we’re solving a real problem.
• Also understand that competition is inevitable, but if you differentiate, you’ll have a competitive advantage. The key to differentiation is focus: focus on a specific market, focus on the top benefits you offer, and focus on your competition. The danger of trying to cater to several market groups is that you won’t be able to do any of them well. If you take the time to do well in one area, you’ll be different. Overall, your focus should be on creating real value; if your product has value, the money and business aspect will come.
• Additionally, your team is the most influential part of the startup process. Without proper communication and collaboration, your startup will suffer, and your team won’t make much progress. It’s also crucial for your team to delegate tasks and hold each other responsible for completing them so that you can make substantial progress.

Advice for New Entrepreneurs

For all the new entrepreneurs out there, here are some pieces of advice we want to give you. These are also things that, if we could go through our process so far, we would keep in the back of our minds from the beginning.

• Once you get an idea, don’t focus too much on the solution and minute details. There can be a hundred different ways to solve a problem, so focusing on the customer’s problem is crucial. If you talk to as many potential customers as you can, you’ll have a better understanding of the problem, and you’ll know the best way to solve it.
• Furthermore, get to know the people you’ll be working with on a deeper level than where you are from and what grade you’re in. Learn about each other’s motivations, interests and personalities.

Five people make up our incredible team: Zaid Ali (Brain), Kelly Ding (Brander), Elaine Liu (Builder), Arnav Machavarapu (Builder), and Cameron Meyer (Business Developer).