With patient-centric healthcare on the rise, it's about time someone made waiting at the doctor a little less maddening.
UpTech graduate
Dr. Scribbles is giving it a try by transforming an extremely mundane item — exam table paper — into an interactive patient experience.
"The national average wait time (at the doctor) is 21 minutes," says Angela Malone, founder of Dr. Scribbles. "Dr. Scribbles is solving the problem by providing the patient, especially pediatric (patients), fun, educational activities to make their office visit more enjoyable as well as more efficient."
The unique Dr. Scribbles paper is printed with puzzles, activities and coded interactive features. When a patient scans the paper with Dr. Scribbles' ScribbleVision mobile app, the paper serves numerous purposes, unlocking advertising content, patient satisfaction surveys and more.
Dr. Scribbles is the brainchild of Malone and Sheila Stidham, both parents who are more than familiar with the doctor's office waiting game.
"I was in the pediatricians office with my two daughters," Malone says. "We were bored, I was playing charades, the doctor came in, and needless to say I was embarrassed. The light bulb went off right there."
Malone started her entrepreneurship career in the early 1990s with a line of designer cat and dog collars. In 2011 she started Creategivity, an umbrella company for socially-supportive businesses with a focus on family. Dr. Scribbles is Creategivity's first startup. Stidham is also a small business veteran.
Dr. Scribbles found its way to UpTech's informatics accelerator due to Malone and Stidham's desire to build a product with unique technological features and mobile app integration abilities. Their exam paper has features like augmented reality, geofencing and quick response code scanning. The company needed an accelerator to ease their entry into the increasingly technical healthcare industry as well as the world of successful mobile applications.
Dr. Scribbles graduated with the third UpTech class in March and has kept the momentum going.
"We are seeing repeat sales from local pediatric offices, distributorships and a large hospital system on the West Coast," Malone says. "We have little ones requesting Dr. Scribbles rooms upon a second visit."
Much like many UpTech companies, Dr. Scribbles is firmly established in Northern Kentucky and plans to stay there. With the healthcare industry in a state of constant flux these days, Malone and Stidham see incredible potential.
"Due to the ever-changing effort to increase patient satisfaction and with that trend growing, Dr. Scribbles is the right product at the right time for the right reason," Malone says.
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