Student Entrepreneurs Tackle Healthcare Burnout with Technology-Based Platform

"Vitalize isn't just a startup, it's a mission," said Sanketh Andhavarapu, co-founder and chief of product and strategy at Vitalize. "We exist to restore the purpose and joy and improve the well-being of healthcare providers globally, so that millions of patients get the best care possible."

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, healthcare providers were facing increasing levels of burnout across all clinician and non-clinician levels (e.g., physicians, nurses, community and public health workers, and nursing aides, among others). The pandemic further exacerbated the problem, for example, excessive workloads, administrative burdens, lack of organizational support, staff being asked to work in unfamiliar clinical environments, and shortage of personal protective equipment.

Burnout refers to a psychological syndrome related to physical and mental stress. It is attributed to factors such as emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced personal accomplishment. Many healthcare providers say burnout is caused by increasing administrative duties and long hours.  

Released in 2022, Vitalize is a wellness-based platform tailored to address burnout among healthcare providers. The app includes modules on mindfulness and resilience, gratitude journaling, digital peer support communities, and group coaching to support the development of skills and beliefs needed to combat burnout in healthcare. For hospital administrators, the platform encompasses a web-based dashboard that is designed to help hospital leadership reduce employee burnout and promote mental and psychological well-being.

Recently, ACCCBuzz spoke with Andhavarapu and Veeraj Shah, chief executive officer, to learn more about Vitalize. 

Andhavarapu: From as early as I can remember, I’ve aspired to become a patient caregiver. I spent hundreds of hours working in different clinical environments as a volunteer and a medical assistant. During these experiences, I saw first-hand how healthcare workers struggle with the effects of burnout, including my own mentors. This inspired me to work on tackling the problem of burnout.

Shah: I grew up with poor health, so I was in and out of hospitals and doctors’ offices. That experience gave me a different perspective of improving health and wellness, as well as relationship-building with healthcare providers. 

Because of my experience, I knew I wanted to work in healthcare, but saw entrepreneurship as a way to make a more immediate impact on healthcare.

Vitalize: We started working on the idea in the summer of 2020 and conducted interviews with healthcare providers throughout the year. We participated in a business incubator at the University of Maryland to start organizing what we were doing. By fall of 2020, we had a plan and began designing our product through the spring of 2021. We had a minimum viable product ready for our public beta in the fall of 2021. 

It is worth mentioning that we would not be where we are today without our Vitalize team. Nikhil D’Souza is a co-founder and serves as our chief technology officer, and Anthony Sartori, our director of Mindfulness.

Vitalize: That is exactly why we chose the name. That, and we had a cool logo idea.

Vitalize: We held qualitative interviews with as many people as we could across the globe, which served as our primary research. We also completed a literature review on medical research investigating burnout among the healthcare workforce. We wanted to define what a day looks like for providers at different levels. One example is our work in New York City, where we spoke with nurse managers all the way up to the chief wellness officer.

Vitalize: We bootstrapped the company to date, raising over $100,000 from a series of university grants, competitions, and outside grants. We recently started our first equity fundraiser, which helps to bring the platform to life on a larger scale.

Vitalize: The app is still in its pilot phase. To date, we have over 200 people using the app.

Vitalize: We are measuring return on investment in a few ways. Our short-term goals are looking to build engagement, maintain users, and user satisfaction outcomes related to emotional well-being, job safety, and job security. 

For the long term, we are looking for reductions in turnover and burnout rates and resulting cost savings for healthcare organizations.

Vitalize: We won the grand prize of the 2022 Pitch Dingman Competition, hosted by the Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship at the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business. Since we have been working with such a lean mentality, this funding will help support feature development and product launches at additional institutions, ultimately allowing us to reach clinicians across the country.

Vitalize is available on Google Play and the App Store.