Kat Cormack has over 13 years of experience in digital mental health. She developed the WellHappy app as her first project without any prior app development experience. The process involved focus groups, scoping, identifying stakeholders, and dealing with scope creep and development challenges. The app launched but then faced bureaucracy and issues being supported within the NHS system. Kat then helped develop BuddyApp, which is now used across the UK NHS and beyond. Her lessons learned include understanding the slow NHS bureaucracy, fragmented system, importance of navigators, commissioning cycles, dangers of sole NHS funding, and challenges of proving efficacy to the NHS.

1. Tech For Good
Lessons Learned (what I wish I had known)
Kat Cormack
Client Director, Buddy App
Tech For Good Meetup
Campus London
July 2015

2. Introduction: My journey from hobbyist to
professional
• 13 years digital mental health experience
• 12 years mental health service use
• Project Manager for the WellHappy app
• Client Director for BuddyApp
• Digital mental health and social media
consultant
“Get off the computer and do some real work” - Kat’s
Dad

3. Developing the WellHappy app
• I had never developed an app
• Never even worked in an office!
• Seconded from YoungMinds to the
NHS
to develop an app young people
asked for

4. The journey
• The State of Mind manifesto
• Focus groups with young people to develop the look & feel
• Project scoping - which of course lead to scope creep!
• Identifying and working with key stakeholders: developers, designers and the 3rd
sector
• Tore up our contract with initial developer
• Arduous process of re-tendering and it took us 3 go’s but we found a dev!
• Wireframing, initial development, sprint work to a very tight deadline!
• Produced the app and launched at NHS Innovation Expo & City Hall
• Start winning awards
Then a lot of radio silence. And bureaucracy. And fighting.
During this time the app broke but we couldn’t fix it.
Finally the GDS told us we should never have made an app and would have to scrap it.
18 months later the app has finally been transferred to our 3rd sector partners

5. What I learnt
• It’s very hard work developing technology on the inside - the people are
amazing but the system is very bureaucratic and VERY slow
• The NHS does not quite yet grasp digital contracts - this caught us out!
• It’s a pleasure to develop for Android but iOS may make you lose the will
to live
• Rules and regulations can and do change so it’s important to stay up to
date e.g. kitemarking
• Sometimes it doesn’t matter what patients want, or so it seems
• The wheel is reinvented a LOT at great cost & waste of time

6. BuddyApp
• Co-produced with and for the NHS
• Used by over 12 trusts across the UK but also increasingly in private practice
and the 3rd sector
• Continually evolving product based on customer feedback
• Based on theories of patient and behavioural activation
• Strong evidence base around lower DNA rates, improved outcomes & user
satisfaction

7. What I’ve
learnt
• It’s easier on the sidelines..but not by much - less red tape and arbitrary
deadlines
• Start up world is intense! Especially when you’re in a crowded landscape
or work for a very small business
• The NHS is very fragmented & will never commission one service for all
• You NEED an NHS navigator - someone who understands the system
• You also need to understand the commissioning cycle
• It can be very dangerous to rely on the NHS for all your funding
• It can be VERY difficult to get hold of anyone in the NHS (especially during
summer)
• You need to make it as easy as possible for clinicians and make it about
them and not their patients needs
• It can be almost impossible to get data or support to prove the efficacy
CONTROVERSIAL: The evidence base argument can be a smokescreen

8. Thank you for listening
Contact me:
kat@buddyapp.co.uk
@kittycormack