Care to Translate - Interview with the developer of a fantastic app

Did you have any prior development or coding experience?

Partly. I (Maja) had started a tech-company prior to joining Care to Translates journey and had experience in developing apps and building a team around this product.

What was the most challenging aspect of developing mobile app?

There are many challenging aspects, but one key success factor was to have a tech-team inhouse that is led by our CTO and Co-founder Alexander Gyllensvärd. It was crucial to be able to recruit a like-minded person but with a strong background in development, since the other co-founders had their backgrounds in other fields (healthcare & entrepreneurship)

Other factors that have helped us along the way are that we always tried to develop with the mindset to make our app as scalable as possible and focusing on our vision: Everyone working in healthcare should be able to talk to all patients - no matter the language. Having this mindset and focus has made it easier for us to prioritize and to move forward step by step.

_{Care to translate AB}

The interviewee, Maja Magnusson, has a background in architecture and management consulting. She is a serial entrepreneur and since 2018 she has been part of building Care to Translate AB as COO and Cofounder, with a focus on developing digital translation tools for the healthcare sector. Maja was born and raised in Munich and has been living in Stockholm for the past 13 years. She is passionate about tech, innovation and building beautiful companies inside and out.

The seed for Care to Translate was sown in 2015 when our founder Linus Kullänger attended his first year of the medical program at Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm. He was placed at a health center in a migrant-dense area and was shocked by the language barriers he was facing on a daily basis.

Together with some classmates Linus started the non-profit initiative “Språk i vården” ( “Language in health care”) - evening courses in language and culture. In addition to teaching basic phrases, the group also wanted to impart knowledge of relevant language areas. All participants also received a small note with 40 care-specific phrases in different languages.

The initiative was appreciated: ”That little note alone did a lot for the alliance with the patients. But it was difficult to reach a large mass of people through the language evenings. And finding that note at just the right time was not entirely unproblematic either.

In 2016 the initiative to build an app was made. The app was launched in the spring of 2017, with support from Sveriges Läkarförbunds Studentförening (The Swedish Medical Association’s Student Association). It was very basic (the app had 40 phrases in 5 different languages), but it spread quickly via social media showing that the demand was great. After two days, it had already received 1,500 downloads.

At the start of 2018, the company Care to Translate AB was founded by Linus Kullänger och Martin Schalling. Shortly afterwards, Annie Backman and Maja Magnusson also joined as co-founders. And in December 2018, the first version of today’s app, Care to Translate, was released.

Name a few of your favorite apps and reason you love them.

Following apps inspire our team a lot, since they are built in a very scalable way and are beautiful products:
Spotify: find the music you like or get inspired by others. Great UX and UI! Initial spread mainly organically - something we can see happening with our product as well.
Slack: collaborate with your team and communicate efficiently and transparently. Buttom up approach - this inspires us a lot!

How long have you been working on this app?

The foundation was set in 2015 when Linus Kullänger (our founder and CEO) started to work on the project to solve language barriers in healthcare. In 2017 the first app was launched and we have been building on it ever since.

What need of the user did you have in mind when developing this app?

Solving language barriers in healthcare.

In what way do you think your app is better than similar apps on the market? Please describe in detail what innovation you think you bring and what you are proud of in your app.

Our team has deep knowledge from the healthcare sector and knows the processes and patient journeys which has helped us not only develop a tool to overcome language barriers in healthcare, but has also helped us to understand the best way to implement it so it can be directly linked to existing processes and other it-solutions in use.

Our product has been developed in collaboration with our customers from the start and therefore we can provide new users a ready product that can be implemented and used in their organization from day one.

What are your future plans and expected features of the coming new versions of this app?

We continue to develop our product in collaboration with our users and customers and therefore our focus lies to improve it to be even better suited for all types of healthcare situations, giving our users both more flexibility and possibility to customize it to specific needs.

Scalability is still a leading principle when designing new features, and we constantly include new technologies that will improve language handling today and in the future.

Assuming new users of your app are reading this page. What do you want to ask them to do (contact you about X, Share the app, etc.)?

First of all I want to say: thank you for showing an interest in this topic! Please help us to tear down language barriers in healthcare by downloading our app Care to Translate (for FREE) and share it with people in your network - because every translation matters, and every correct translation made can make a huge impact on someone's life!

Read more about us on www.caretotranslate.com