Frenalytics | 2020 Q3 + Q4 Progress Report
Sayonara 2020! This year challenged our country — and the world at large — in ways we couldn’t have even imagined one year ago. But with all the bad that happened in 2020, we’re poised for an even more prosperous 2021. Did someone say Roaring Twenties?
Our August 2020 Progress Report for Q1 + Q2 shared the grim statistic of 400,000 confirmed COVID cases here in New York with over 32,000 deaths. As of today, our number of cases in New York has doubled with over 1.05 million positive tests, and our state’s death rate has risen to 38,000 — the most of any U.S. state. On the bright side, the world’s best scientists and engineers collaborated to create a first-of-its-kind mobile contact tracing protocol, helped schools and businesses alike transition to remote environments (seemingly overnight), and — in an incredible scientific feat — develop, test, win emergency approval for, and begin to distribute multiple COVID-19 vaccine worldwide.
For the Frenalytics team, 2020 brought a multitude of challenges, but it also presented a number of exciting opportunities. We’d love to share a few of our company updates with you and set goals for our web-based cognitive therapy tool in the year ahead. Let’s go! ⤵️
Therapy Session Dashboard v2
One of the main pillars of Frenalytics is patient-centric analytics: with these insights, users can leverage data to inform clinical decisions. Earlier this year, in a major step towards this goal, we released the Therapy Session Dashboard as an analytics tool for facilitators and family members.
In our Q1 + Q2 Progress Report, we set goals for introducing v2 features later this year. I’m thrilled to share that in Q3 and Q4, we released huge improvements for our Therapy Session Dashboard v2. Our new Health Curve in the left screenshot is an interactive chart that visualizes a patient’s performance over time. Hover over a plotted point and you’ll see the Accuracy, Score, and other details from that session.
In Q4, we also released per-question statistics within the Therapy Session Dashboard. Simply click on the eye icon in the new Actions column (in the first screenshot on the left-hand side) and you’ll be able to drill into analytics for the selected section. On this screen, the Health Curve and Questionnaire Questions refresh to show per-section and per-question statistics! That’s not all: as of Q4, users can use the familiar switches from the main dashboard to also turn ‘on’ and ‘off’ questions from a session!
💡 Coming soon in v3: View the Health Curve chart for each question within a section!
Upgraded Questionnaire Module
At the heart of Frenalytics is our Questionnaire module — the central location where family members and caretakers can enter valuable information about a patient (or student — more on this later) that’s later presented to them as questions in a Therapy Session. While our previous Questionnaire module “did the job” when it came to inputting answers to questions, we knew it needed a significant upgrade to make it more intuitive, reliable, and technically capable for future enhancements on our roadmap.
With these objectives in mind, we released our upgraded Questionnaire module in Q4, and with it, these exciting features:
- Auto-save functionality: Just like Google Docs, as soon as you make a change on the Questionnaire — like entering a new answer or uploading an image — your changes are instantly saved.
- Revamped UI: The new Questionnaire module is streamlined and more responsive, making it even easier for caretakers to answer questions and attach media.
- Improved cropping tool: We redesigned the built-in cropping tool when uploading images and got rid of some pesky bugs.
- Custom Questions + Custom Sections: This brand new feature allows caretakers to ask virtually anything in our Therapy Sessions —think favorite sports players (LGM!), details on past jobs, vacation memories, and specifics on family members. Plus, you can create a Custom Section to group these new questions together for useful analytics!
💡 Coming soon in v3: Pull in media from Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and more with new integrations!
Expansion to Education
When talks of “returning” to school started over the summer, Chris and I began to realize just how badly classroom instruction was impacted by the pandemic — particularly with special needs students who were disproportionately affected by remote learning. In response to this, we adapted Frenalytics to serve those with Down syndrome, autism, and related intellectual disabilities; as of Q3, teachers, parents, and students can experience our personalized approach to cognitive care. In an era of distanced learning — and the lack of structure and in-person instruction that typically accompanies it — we wanted to make it easy for schools to adopt Frenalytics to teach important life skills.
In September, we welcomed our first class to Frenalytics: a high school classroom in Escondido, CA that continues to hold class remotely for the 2020–2021 school year. Miss Jen uses Frenalytics almost every day, and her students run through Learning Sessions focusing on family, sight words, money, time, and reading, to name a few. To date, the class has completed over 250 sessions and is showing a nearly 14% average accuracy increase over time! In early 2021, we’re eager to welcome additional special ed classes in New York, Arizona, and California!
Some More New Faces
In Q3 and Q4, we welcomed three new members to the Frenalytics team: Arya, Ahmer, and David!
- Arya joined us as a Business Development Advisor, where he lends his vast knowledge of social media outreach and digital marketing to refine our lead generation, content, and growth strategies.
- Ahmer began in early July as our QA Engineer, revamping our testing processes and working closely with Dejan and myself when validating each sprint’s work. During our Fall Intern program, he also coached Linda (more below) on how we test development tasks from both a technical and a business perspective.
- David joined us in late December as an Account Executive, but he’s already wearing many hats — he’ll be developing our brand message, elevating our sales and marketing strategies, and booking demos with interested prospects, especially as we pursue the special ed market in 2021.
Fall Intern Program
In response to a LinkedIn post from the Assistant Dean of Undergraduate Career Advising for Boston College’s Carroll School of Management, we created and launched our first-ever Summer Intern Program with a group of Boston College undergrads. After an exciting and productive summer, we expanded the program to host a Fall Intern Program as well! Time for a meet-and-greet (from top-left to bottom-right):
- John: A Computer Science intern with us since the summer, John has been killing it with our Frenalytics Mobile app written entirely in Flutter. He’s built our cross-platform mobile app from the ground-up — and he’s entirely self-taught.
- Dejan: Not an intern 😃, but our awesome lead developer who doubles as a great mentor for our intern developers!
- Rita: A current BC junior studying Computer Science and Mathematics, Rita began this fall with a deep dive into our C# codebase and completing HTML, CSS, and JavaScript tutorials along the way. She’s learned about Visual Studio, SQL Server, and Jira — and she’s now rebuilding our login page!
- Linda: A sophomore studying Finance and Economics at BC, Linda spent the fall semester working alongside our QA lead Ahmer to scare away any bugs and test our brand-new features like the new Questionnaire module and Therapy Session Dashboard updates we featured above!
- Kelley: A marketing intern also with us since the summer, Kelley assisted with outbound lead generation and created a number of HubSpot sequences with her newfound prospects. She also revamped our Help Center content for special ed students, teachers, and parents who started using Frenalytics this school year.
- Will: Our newest intern and a Computer Engineering sophomore joining us from Villanova University, Will will (👀) leverage his Python and C++ skills to learn our C#, .NET codebase and build new functionality (like our Progress Report feature) and integrations (think one-click Zoom meetings!) throughout the spring program.
- Mansi: A graduate student at the University of Maryland, Mansi put her Product Management skills to good use this fall semester. Not only did she run our Intern Development project within Jira, but she also kept our documentation in sync and developed prototypes for our latest features in the works.
Thank you interns for a successful and enjoyable fall semester! 💯
2020 Goals Check & Goals for 2021
In our 2020 Q1 + Q2 Progress Report, we reflected on some of the goals we set for ourselves this year. Now that the year is over (hallelujah), let’s see how we did:
- Funding Opportunities: We submitted a proposal to NSF’s SBIR program in early June and applied to NIH-NIA’s SBIR program in September. Though we weren’t awarded either grant, we remain undeterred — check in with us in early 2021 for some updates on venture funding!
- New Features: We spent the first half of 2020 laying the groundwork for deep analytics and reducing technical debt. This allowed us to spend the second half of 2020 releasing awesome features like an upgraded Questionnaire module and powerful new features for the Therapy Session Dashboard. In 2021, our focus will be on integrations and accessibility — think Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube for media integrations, and Amazon Alexa and Google Home for IoT integrations that increase accessibility.
- User Engagement and Feedback: In Q3 + Q4, we expanded to education with a focus on special ed classrooms. Feedback at Escondido High School has been hugely positive, and we’re excited to bring Frenalytics to more classrooms nationwide in 2021!
Thank you for reading! We wish you and your loved ones a happy, healthy, and hope-filled 2021. A special thank you to our healthcare workers who will help deliver on our wishes in the year ahead — may the COVID-19 vaccine make your superpowers eternal. 🙏🏼
Questions? Comments? Just want to chat? 📨 matt@thinkgroupholdings.com
