4alivio
Technology to improve quality of life
With an innovative stack and UX/UI, 4alivio harnesses technology for an intuitive solution to improve the quality of life of people with inflammatory arthritis.
Mission
Founded by Caitlin West, 4alivio focuses on designing consumer-focused products for people in America who have inflammatory arthritis.
Impact
4alivio harnesses software development and data analytics to improve the quality of life of a vulnerable population in medical terms, working as a tool for physicians to control patients’ wellness in the long term.
Services
The venture contacted Capicua to work on both a mobile application for users to gather data on the disease’s symptoms and flares and a redefinition of its visual identity to showcase the product’s innovative features further.
Goal
4alivio’s main goal was to harness technology to improve the quality of life of people with inflammatory arthritis and chronic pain.
Story
According to the NIH, arthritis affects over 53 million people over 18 years of age in the US. What’s more, this chronic disease has no specific cure, and as of today, medical specialists are only able to treat reactive flare-ups individually.
As someone who has had inflammatory arthritis her whole life, Caitlin West (4alivio’s founder) spent years researching ways to harness technology to improve the quality of life of those who share her condition.
West’s first goal was to build an app-controlled patch device that would be able to administer needed treatment in specific areas when feeling pain or soreness.
In fact, the name 4alivio comes from the four main types of therapy the device would be able to provide: Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation (TENS), Pulsed Electromagnetic Fields (PEMF), Infrared Light Therapy and Hot/Cold Therapy.
Yet, she soon realized this device would take a long time to build, develop, test, and approve.
Harnessing the rise of Generative AI in Digital Product Development, West contacted Capicua to shift efforts to a data-driven approach for users to track circumstances that were capable of propitiating flare-ups for different users.
Under the slogan of “unifying chronic pain relief for a return to normalcy,” 4alivio rises as a disruptive solution for users all across the US to harness data to track, predict, and treat a crippling, mostly non-speak-of disease.
Challenges
As a health-related digital product, the main challenge was to offer an end-to-end experience that was able to make life better for all its users.
This challenge needed to focus on interfaces’ ease of use, especially in the context of users who may have chronic pain when interacting with its screens.
Since the product aimed at being a tool for physicians and medical specialists, it also needed a robust stack that allowed users to gather as much information as possible. Likewise, there was an underlying challenge on how to boost adoption for all parties.
Strategy
Since inflammatory arthritis affects everyday life, we focused on putting technology at the service of improving quality of life.
A key aspect of the strategic approach was to prioritize users’ well-being by not depending so much on the approval times the dedicated device could take.
Today, the focus of 4alivio is on working with medical centers and specialists to become a tool for doctors and physicians to check their patients' status and health.
The power of the application relies on offering specific, measurable metrics when users go to their check-up appointments so doctors can harness the greatest amount of data possible and tailor long-term treatments.
Design
In design terms, we developed 4alivio’s new brand with a more softly-looked logo and color palette to convey the idea of calmness in stressful times.
Our work with the brand’s design included its brand guidelines, its website and web admin panel’s UX and UI Design, and the design of the mobile application itself.
Technology
Given that aspects like climate conditions and exercise frequency influence inflammatory arthritis, we started by connecting the application with weather-tracking tools to build data-based correlations between flare-ups and edges like temperature and humidity.
Moreover, we added all the necessary options to track other daily aspects, such as medication consumption and sleep patterns.
As users check in their flare-ups and add specifications regarding the specific context in which they occur, 4alivio’s platform is able to predict when users would be more likely to suffer from a flare-up.
We also harnessed AI to enable the application to determine flare-up tendencies so users could proactively take care of themselves.
