Engagement & Tech: How SMARTCharts is Redefining Rehabilitation with Corinne Vargas, founder and CEO of SMART Charts

[00:00:02] Hey everybody, welcome back to the Outcomes Rocket founder stories. I'm so excited to have you all join us again because today I've got an awesome guest. Her name is Corinne Vargas. She is a former actuary turned speech language pathologist and she's the founder and CEO of SMART Charts. It's a startup that creates innovative data visualizations to engage patients and enable data informed decision making.

[00:00:32] and speech, occupational and physical therapy. They won a lot of awards including Techstars 2022. They were also selected as a 2022 Prime Innovation Challenge winner and also a grand prize winner of TechRise. So she's busy rolling up her sleeves, doing a lot of things at companies like Deloitte, but now she's carving her own path with this company. Corinne, thanks for joining us.

[00:00:59] Great to be here. Thanks, Al.

[00:01:00] Hey, my pleasure. So look, before we dive into the company and all the things that you guys are up to, tell us a little bit about you. What is that got you into healthcare and also entrepreneurship?

[00:01:13] Yeah, absolutely. Well, it wasn't a direct path. I did start at Deloitte as an actuary and kind of wove my way into the healthcare world by accident, quite frankly. I became interested in speech language pathology for multiple reasons, but a lot of it had to do with coaching executives. It did

[00:01:30] different types of different types of levels. But that said, when I was going through grad school, I realized that there was a lot of issues within the healthcare world that we all know probably, but also specifically in speech OT and PT and documentation.

[00:01:46] So I used my actuary skills to develop the earliest version of smart charts that was in Excel out of the basement of Northwestern University and kind of jumped in from there.

[00:01:58] That's awesome. I love it because so many things that are in Excel can actually become companies. Like so many people have these sheets and they love them. But when the entrepreneurs like Corinne come and show you, you could automate this thing. It's amazing. So I love that story, Corinne. And so let's dig into it. Talk to us about smart charts. What are you guys doing? How's it making a difference in the ecosystem?

[00:02:24] Yeah, absolutely. So you know, rehabilitation is the underpinning of all of healthcare. So no matter what diagnosis or disease state or just different periods in our lives of injury, you go through majority of those areas and diagnoses require physical therapy to get better speech therapy and or occupational therapy.

[00:02:47] So our group really works to support that entire system by understanding what is normal when we're going through therapeutic rehab and visualizing that so patients can actually engage in their data, understand it.

[00:03:01] So that you can kind of think of like your Apple Watch or Fitbit and really allowing patients to understand how close they are to achieving those goals, why those goals matter to the ultimate picture and really use their own data to really get excited about what that next step is and becoming more impendent.

[00:03:17] On the flip side of that, though, too, as a clinician, there's so much information in these notes, yet it's really hard to make data driven decisions when you're reading pages on pages of information that's just minute changes and little pieces of progress.

[00:03:32] So the visualizations are really helpful for the entire care team from physicians that are surgeons to, you know, different types of neurological physicians, nurses, as well as the whole rehab team and helping understand what is going right with that patient.

[00:03:46] But actually, more importantly, what is going wrong to course correct along the way.

[00:03:50] So that's kind of the value that we bring to the whole system is just bringing information to life so that patients and providers can make the appropriate decisions and really understand what's going on.

[00:04:03] I love that. Thank you for sharing that with us.

[00:04:06] And I imagine you guys hook into the EMR or EHR, full data, and then there's patients and also a clinician or care manager view.

[00:04:17] Can you kind of walk us through maybe help me and the listeners visualize this?

[00:04:22] Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, at this stage, we've moved into enterprise health systems and large rehab chains and supporting those practitioners there.

[00:04:30] So smart threats is you can kind of think of it as like a headless application.

[00:04:34] So basically, we're using the information from the EHR and then pulling in that data, turning it into those pretty progress pictures and automated notes, and then feeding that back into the EHR.

[00:04:46] The way that a patient would interact.

[00:04:48] Yeah. Awesome.

[00:04:49] Yeah. The way that a patient would interact would be, you know, through like their MyCharts or their patient portal.

[00:04:54] And then for the physicians and care team, that would just be through their typical EHR, being able to see the data.

[00:04:59] Which I love because, let's face it, we don't need another app.

[00:05:04] No.

[00:05:06] We don't need another app. Like there's too many apps out there.

[00:05:09] We need less logins, less apps.

[00:05:12] And so what I'm hearing you say, Karen, is you're the engine that processes the information and pushes it out in a digestible, motivating format.

[00:05:22] Absolutely.

[00:05:22] And, you know, one of the biggest pieces of information that we got from interviewing a lot of different providers in different settings was please don't make us log into one more thing, right?

[00:05:32] We already pay enough for electronic health system or record.

[00:05:36] Please do not make us leave it.

[00:05:38] So as we've evolved from MVP into these next stages, we've realized that that was really, really important.

[00:05:45] And then, like you said, as a patient, I can't remember all of my passwords, let alone the time it took me to go through the verifications of face, finger, you know, text.

[00:05:56] I have no idea.

[00:05:57] Too many.

[00:05:58] I love magic links.

[00:06:00] Magic links are great.

[00:06:01] Yes.

[00:06:03] Make it that easy for me, please.

[00:06:06] Yeah, no, this is so great.

[00:06:09] And, you know, for everybody listening, like definitely something to think about as you're innovating your products and solutions.

[00:06:15] We don't need more apps.

[00:06:16] We don't need more logins.

[00:06:18] We need less clicks.

[00:06:18] But we do need the insights and we need them fast.

[00:06:22] So talk to us, Karen, about how the engine works and how is it different than other things that are out there?

[00:06:30] Is there anything out there?

[00:06:31] Yeah, it's a great question.

[00:06:32] So, you know, our biggest theoretical competition or what are clinicians using now is just straight electronic health records.

[00:06:39] So that's open entry notes.

[00:06:41] Mm-hmm.

[00:06:42] Exactly.

[00:06:43] So open epic, Cerner, Allscripts, open entry notes, which take a lot of time to take.

[00:06:47] And there's lack of standardization in those notes.

[00:06:49] So with that, clinicians are putting a bunch of information in there that sometimes, you know, patients need, sometimes other providers need, and sometimes the insurance companies need.

[00:07:00] And that's just absolutely insane, right?

[00:07:02] That that one note would go and try to tell the patient how they're doing, the doctors, and then, oh, yeah, please reimburse us based off this open entry note.

[00:07:10] And so it takes a lot of time and a lot of productivity and a lot of time actually following up and having additional conversations.

[00:07:18] And so that's the biggest, you know, competition or tool in the space.

[00:07:23] There's other tools that are using AI and rehab and speech specifically, but they're more retroactive.

[00:07:29] So they're going backwards and looking at notes after they've been written and kind of reading those free text open entry notes and doing report cards or kind of creating summaries from that.

[00:07:39] But in terms of the visualizations and the plugins and kind of augmenting EHRs where these providers are at, were they only solution that's working off of clinician-driven notes?

[00:07:50] So it's a good space to be in.

[00:07:52] It's definitely been an interesting ride, though, to start to convince and show people how it actually works.

[00:07:58] And it's been a fun ride.

[00:08:00] I'll call it that.

[00:08:01] You know what?

[00:08:02] Health tech is a fun ride.

[00:08:04] Let's call it that.

[00:08:06] Right?

[00:08:06] Yeah.

[00:08:07] You know, but once you figure that out, once you get a foothold, it's land and expand.

[00:08:11] And the opportunities, once you have the testimonials, you know, they begin to increase.

[00:08:16] And so certainly it's that patience, right?

[00:08:19] And getting those hits, which it sounds like you are.

[00:08:21] And so kudos to you on that.

[00:08:23] On the side of the technology, you shared that with us.

[00:08:27] You talked about, you know, as an entrepreneur, it's hard, right?

[00:08:30] You don't have all the answers.

[00:08:32] It's been interesting.

[00:08:33] You know, this is a common word that I hear, the sales cycles.

[00:08:37] What stands out to you as a big setback that you've learned so much from that's made you guys better?

[00:08:42] Oh, you just touched on it there.

[00:08:44] So those sales cycles, those are nice and painful.

[00:08:47] Those sales cycles have been the nemesis of SmartTreads since the very beginning.

[00:08:51] But, you know, an even more interesting way to think about it and look at it actually is you asked me this question is we were not getting any sales early last year.

[00:09:00] And, you know, what was really hard was communicating what SmartTreads actually does.

[00:09:05] And the fact that we could generate notes off of, you know, some bits of information for these providers was completely foreign to the healthcare system.

[00:09:15] It was like, what are you doing?

[00:09:16] Where is this?

[00:09:17] How does this work?

[00:09:18] And then, you know, the biggest thing that helped us was actually ChatGPT.

[00:09:22] So when ChatGPT rolled out last year, it became like, oh, this makes sense.

[00:09:27] That's what it does.

[00:09:29] Exactly.

[00:09:30] So the idea that notes could come out of nowhere or that these systems had started seeing different applications in different areas, all of those original like sales meetings that I had, I immediately got callbacks at that time.

[00:09:43] Nice.

[00:09:43] And like, can we see what you're doing again?

[00:09:46] ML AI became a lot more acceptable within these settings and even kind of their initiatives in terms of moving forward.

[00:09:53] And really, when we talk about efficiency and creating data that makes sense, you know, that's where we're sitting in rehab and ChatGPT does that elsewhere.

[00:10:00] And it was just such a crazy confluence of situations that really, really helped us not die.

[00:10:06] I love it.

[00:10:07] And listen, that's so great.

[00:10:09] Yeah.

[00:10:09] No, listen, it's beautiful.

[00:10:11] And let's take advantage of it.

[00:10:13] And I've heard that many times now that this rise in technology, the Gen AIs, the other labs, has really led to a more acceptance and understanding of the technologies like yours.

[00:10:26] I wanted to ask you a clarifying question, Karen.

[00:10:29] So the bits of information, help me unpack that.

[00:10:32] Like, where are all these bits of information coming from?

[00:10:35] Yeah.

[00:10:35] So when you're going through, let's just, PT is a really easy example.

[00:10:38] I feel like a lot of people have experience in.

[00:10:40] So let's say, you know, you strained a knee or a shoulder.

[00:10:43] You go to that physical therapist and they do an assessment on that first visit and they create goals immediately.

[00:10:50] So those goals are what you would hope to be at the end of physical therapy, which is back to normal, pain-free, full range of motion.

[00:10:58] And you ultimately have usually two, three, four, five different types of goals.

[00:11:02] And within those goals, you have a skill and a context and supports and then, you know, your reps, your accuracy, right?

[00:11:09] And so what we're doing is working with the bits of information and the changes in those components and goals to figure out what makes sense on a visual format.

[00:11:18] And then what makes sense as we're aggregating this information based on all of our demographics.

[00:11:22] So male versus female, different types of ages and different diagnosis, shoulder versus knee.

[00:11:28] Got it.

[00:11:28] And so those bits of information are actually being entered by someone?

[00:11:32] Exactly.

[00:11:33] So when these goals are written, they're essentially writing progress notes off of this is where we hope to be.

[00:11:39] And this is where we are today.

[00:11:41] So, you know, Saul needs a lot of support right now, right?

[00:11:45] He needs a knee brace and hand over hand help to make sure that he can get his knee fully bent.

[00:11:51] And then I don't know if you know this, but I literally sprained my knee this year.

[00:11:55] It was terrible.

[00:11:58] So like, I'm like, how did you know that?

[00:12:02] Creepy, right?

[00:12:03] No.

[00:12:05] But I mean, and I don't know if you went through a physical therapy, but right now rehab tends to be a black box.

[00:12:10] And it's because we're getting all of that information and text only progress notes.

[00:12:14] And like I said, that note has a ton of jargon in it and a ton of stuff that doesn't make a lot of sense to just the average everyday person.

[00:12:21] So that was really where this came from is, you know, my frustration in terms of working with patients on the speech side.

[00:12:28] Why were we using all this language and speech and writing to communicate with individuals that already had difficulty with language in general and or speech?

[00:12:38] Right.

[00:12:38] And then I realized kind of the similarities in terms of this whole format and then that progression format across the rehab spectrum.

[00:12:46] So, yeah, it's really turning that like big, messy report that just has a lot of random information in it or what feels random to a patient and making it useful based on moving.

[00:12:56] So maybe you're not bending anymore.

[00:12:58] Maybe you're finally taking your first step and then maybe you're finally running.

[00:13:01] It's the progression of your abilities over time.

[00:13:04] That's awesome.

[00:13:05] I love that.

[00:13:06] Thanks for clarifying that.

[00:13:07] And then one more clarifying question around use cases.

[00:13:12] So you can use this on a lot of things.

[00:13:14] Am I understanding that correctly?

[00:13:16] Yes.

[00:13:17] Yes.

[00:13:17] Yeah.

[00:13:18] So, you know, it's babies to seniors.

[00:13:20] It's rehab is kind of one of those weird areas where we needed it multiple times throughout our lives, you know, from a little kid, you know, with autism to maybe a senior post stroke.

[00:13:32] Everything in between post, you know, surgical interventions, cancers, MS.

[00:13:37] And what made it so appealing to me once I saw these patterns across all of the disciplines and across all of the ages is the idea that it's a simple solution in terms of just making that data meaningful to everybody who needs it, but also really helping as many people as we can.

[00:13:56] And it's just about organizing that information.

[00:13:58] And I know it seems kind of crazy, but within frameworks, it's doable.

[00:14:03] And that's what we're working on.

[00:14:05] Super cool.

[00:14:05] I love it.

[00:14:06] Thanks for your help understanding and helping us all understand this technology, how it helps people go from where they are today to the ideal destination.

[00:14:17] Is there any gamification or anything like that?

[00:14:20] That's part of it.

[00:14:21] That's a great question.

[00:14:22] So it's so funny.

[00:14:23] You know, as you're developing products, it's like, had you talked to me two or three years ago, it was like gamification, gamification, right?

[00:14:29] Yeah.

[00:14:30] And what we've been really focusing right now, actually, we just got a National Science Foundation SBIR grant is making sure that we're understanding what those progressions look like.

[00:14:39] Right.

[00:14:39] So Sal hurt his knee and he's laying in bed and he's unable to move all the way to being able to run on a soccer field again.

[00:14:46] And we're really just creating those relational aspects within what we would expect to be when we're 100%.

[00:14:52] And what does that look like over time?

[00:14:54] So in terms of the access to patients and giving them that information, we're allowing them to see what is normal versus atypical.

[00:15:01] But we haven't done gamification straight away.

[00:15:04] Not to say it's off the table in the future.

[00:15:06] We just got a little bit of work ahead of us before we get back to that goal.

[00:15:11] It's always been on the plan, but it's going to take a minute for sure.

[00:15:15] Yeah.

[00:15:15] And listen, no, all good.

[00:15:16] I was just curious about it.

[00:15:18] You know, it seems like something that it would lend itself to it.

[00:15:21] And then just thought I'd ask.

[00:15:22] So thanks for sharing that.

[00:15:24] Last one, you know, in health care, if you're going to be successful, it's about following the money trail.

[00:15:30] Who pays for it?

[00:15:31] And so talk to us about that.

[00:15:33] Yeah.

[00:15:34] So, you know, our key customers, our key champions are definitely the heads of rehab.

[00:15:39] So VP that oversees inpatient, outpatient rehab.

[00:15:42] In some instances in the outpatient settings, it's the chief strategy officer, the COO.

[00:15:47] So you can think of these big PT chains that are regional.

[00:15:50] And those are the real champions for us in terms of where do we make, obviously, the biggest difference.

[00:15:55] We're rehab focused.

[00:15:56] But then we're able to really, you know, create low lift pilots to show ROI, you know, without integration.

[00:16:04] And then step into, you know, those full integrations to ensure that, one, we're delivering on what we're promising.

[00:16:10] And then, two, you know, that we're making sure that we're actually getting the information that makes sense within the frameworks that they're using.

[00:16:19] So these electronic health records are necessary and they're so important, but they're not the most easy thing to use when it comes to, you know, creating these connections and making information out of or making actionable information out of a lot of data.

[00:16:33] Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for sharing that.

[00:16:35] Well, this has been super interesting and I love what you and the team have come up with and the future is bright.

[00:16:44] So for everybody listening that you want to, you know, have a call to action for, what would you leave them with and where can they reach you if they want to learn more?

[00:16:54] Absolutely. You can find me right on LinkedIn.

[00:16:57] And I think this goes to LinkedIn, right?

[00:16:59] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:17:00] Yeah. Find me on LinkedIn. That's the number one easiest, quickest place to find us.

[00:17:06] We also, they can jump into mysmartcharts.com and check out the website and get in contact with us there.

[00:17:12] And then one of the biggest pieces I think that, you know, as I think about the through line of what I'm working on, what's gotten us here and really what our patients really need in terms of achieving our goals.

[00:17:24] It's all about resilience, making sure that we're continuing to work in those right directions.

[00:17:29] Even sometimes when it's difficult or everything doesn't seem to be going in the right direction, focusing on what is going right, focusing on what are those green flags and pivoting when you see those red flags.

[00:17:40] And for us, that's been huge from myself as a patient and all my ACL surgeries to becoming a founder to actually making traction in healthcare post-Chat GPT.

[00:17:52] I love it.

[00:17:53] What a great way to close, Corinne.

[00:17:55] I have no better way to close it.

[00:17:57] You did it.

[00:17:57] So thank you so much for that.

[00:18:00] Listeners, check out the show notes.

[00:18:02] That's where you're going to find all the ways to get in touch with Corinne, her LinkedIn, her company, the web address.

[00:18:07] So take advantage of taking action today.

[00:18:10] That's how you make a difference.

[00:18:12] And Corinne, thanks so much for being with us.

[00:18:14] This is great.

[00:18:15] Thanks so much for your time.