'Nothing like this exists.' Darien cancer surivor, Greenwich teen create app for cancer patients, caregivers
It helps cancer patients better manage and track medications, appointments, side effects and everything else. The app also has a mode for caregivers to track burnout, check-ins and alerts.
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They hail from different towns, but share the same goal: lighten the load on cancer patients and caregivers.
Darien's Brynn Forlizzi and Greenwich's Teddy Aaron have known each other since eighth grade.
The pair has teamed up to create an app called Soothe Note.
"Anyone who's been in the cancer world knows of MyChart," co-founder Brynn Forlizzi says. "MyChart is not a great platform, it's not very easily accessible."
Forlizzi is a cancer survivor, so she knows how overwhelmed and inundated patients can get.
"I've had cancer twice in high school and I'm only a junior," Forlizzi says. "I can speak to being in a hospital and visiting my doctor. Of course, I'm grateful to be visiting my doctor, but I have so much information to share with them that maybe I might forget some of it. That's where the app comes in to help supplement that."
Soothe Note launched in March.
It helps cancer patients better manage and track medications, appointments, side effects and everything else.
The app also has a mode for caregivers to track burnout, check-ins and alerts.
"All the other resources... there's nothing like ours." co-founder Teddy Aaron says. "They're super complex and hard to use."
Aaron says he's sees cancer's effects firsthand every day as a caregiver to a loved one in his household.
"The most important thing I make sure not to get distracted about is that the app and the tool I'm building is actually helpful for people," says Aaron.
Soothe Note is free to download.
Its co-founders say it's already making a difference.
"I have a friend who has two parents who are fighting cancer," Forlizzi says. "She texted me the other day. 'Brynn, I just saw your app. This is great, I just told my parents. They're each other's caregivers, they have to know what they're doing.' So, I know it's helping people around me."
Aaron says 70 people downloaded the app on one single day earlier this week.
His goal is one million users by next year.
"That's my big goal," Aaron says, "Our little goal is 30,000."
