Thank you!
Around this time of year, I review the past year's milestones and assess the state of the business. It's a good opportunity to reflect on what went well, what didn't go so well, and what I can do better in the future.
This time I decided to review the past 2.5 years I've been working on ClinicKeeper. Those of you familiar with ClinicKeeper know how the story started: on a whim, I asked my friend and chiropractor, who is always smiling, what he liked least about his work. Without missing a beat, he said keeping notes. He found that while it was a necessary part of the job, it took too long and got in the way of what he really wanted to do - care for his patients.
We worked together to come up with an elegant system on the iPad designed to capture a complete set of notes in minutes. Initial prototypes looked very promising, and I began to explore the possibility of turning this into a business. After conducting market research, I learned that this was a pain point for some chiropractors, and set up Skewed Tie, which in turn created what you now know as ClinicKeeper. I reviewed my plan with many people, not only chiropractors, but also experienced businesspeople. They all thought this was an amazing idea that promised to deliver real and significant value to a clearly defined target market.
Once ClinicKeeper hit the Apple App Store, interest was very high – at first. There were many downloads of the trial version, but few followed through to purchase the full version.
As I continued to spend time with chiropractors, learning what their pain points were, I began to see a quite different picture than my market research suggested. But it didn't coalesce until I sat down to review the past 2.5 years of work. What I learned was that most small offices were actually quite happy to use their existing systems. Some chiropractors even swore that "computers hated them". In their eyes, they were being asked to trade a simple system for a more complex system – all this despite the fact that ClinicKeeper promised to be simpler!
And so, having made few sales, and seeing no evidence of growth, I've decided to take ClinicKeeper off the App Store and shut it down.
The journey has been amazing. This was my first startup, and I have learned a ton. There have also been many difficulties, and that wasn't so awesome, but it's a part of me, and I still count myself lucky that I could learn from those experiences too.
I got to experience so many firsts that wouldn't have been possible for me while employed as a software developer - participating in conferences as a vendor, giving a speech, making sales calls. Even mundane things like planning marketing campaigns and placing ads were exciting for me. I hope that never gets old!
If you spent time with me, believe me, you have helped me learn so much about the process of setting up and running a business, creating a quality product, about the joys of being a chiropractor, about the work of being a chiropractor. Thank you for time. Thank you for your support. Thank you for your inspiration. You have been fantastic!
If you have purchased ClinicKeeper, you will undoubtedly have questions. I will try to anticipate and answer what I can here; feel free to contact me if I haven't addressed your concern.
What happens to my copy of ClinicKeeper?
In the short term, nothing will happen. ClinicKeeper will continue to be available for re-downloading on the Apple App Store; all I've done is toggle a flag that prevents it from being listed for sale.
Furthermore, I designed ClinicKeeper to work without requiring an internet connection. You may use it for as long as you wish. My understanding is that it works very well in all current versions of iOS (up to version 9.1). I cannot guarantee that it will continue to work perfectly in future versions.
Thank you for providing ClinicKeeper, but I would like to move to a new system now. How can I do that?
ClinicKeeper was designed to allow you to generate PDF copies of your patient records. In essence, if you went from a paper system to ClinicKeeper, you've lost nothing - just print out all the PDFs and add them to your paper records.
There is, however, no way to export the data from ClinicKeeper in a suitable format for importing into other systems.
I have entrusted you with confidential data - what will happen to it?
By December 31, 2015, I will delete that data, and any and all backups with that data.
I am a customer from Alberta, and we signed an Information Manager Agreement. What happens now?
As I already mentioned, any information you shared with me will be deleted. I will get in touch with my contact at PIA to verify what, if any further steps need taking.
