beermann

Sanvello Health | Director of Growth, Lead React Native Developer, Senior DevSecOps Engineer | Remote | Full-time | https://sanvello.com

Sanvello is the largest mobile mental health platform providing full-stack, comprehensive support — self-care, coaching, therapy, and community — to help millions of people around the world feel better.

Tech Stack: Java/Dropwizard on the back-end, AngularJS/migrating to React on the front-end, AWS, Postgresql, Redis

Please contact Dale Beermann, CTO, at dale [dot] beermann [at] sanvello [dot] com

Well said. But I could also argue that, were it not for a video of George Floyd being killed, we would not be seeing the community organization we are today. I won't disagree that the community organization is what is driving change though.

Thanks for the thoughtful response. I have discussed the fact that there are repeat offenders on both sides. Nobody has the right to incite mob violence, for example. That could be captured by the same application.

I'm still early in my thinking around this, but welcome the discussion. From my early research and discussions, there is a solution that is needed, but there is a lot of definition that has to happen around what exactly that is in order to take into account issues like the ones you describe.

Sanvello Health | Senior Experience Designer | Minneapolis, MN | Full-time | Onsite preferred, Remote possible | https://sanvello.com

One of Apple's Apps of the Year and Editor's Choice by Google, Sanvello is used by over 3 million individuals and rated highly by consumers and industry experts. Help us build a new class of mental health care experience, bringing together patients, providers and payers.

As the Senior Experience Designer, you will be responsible for the end to end design of the Sanvello product offerings. This role must be capable of delivering modern user-centered design and operating independently in fast paced, collaborative environment.

Reach out to me directly at dale [dot] beermann [at] sanvello [dot] com.

Sanvello Health Inc. | Front-end Developer, Back-end Developer | Madison, WI, Chicago, IL, Minneapolis, MN, but will hire remotely | Onsite or Remote | Full-time | https://sanvello.com/ Sanvello is the one of the largest mental health platforms in the world. Having launched in January 2015, over 3 million people have now signed up to improve their health and wellbeing through our mobile applications. Come help us change the way people think about mental health.

Skills: Front-end: Angluar JS, React, Ionic, Cordova. Back-end: Java, Jetty, Postgresql, Redis, AWS

Please reach out to dale [dot] beermann [at] sanvello.com and include "HN" in the subject.

Pacifica Labs Inc. | Front-end Developer, Back-end Developer, Engineering Manager | Madison, WI but will hire remotely | Onsite or Remote | Full-time | https://thinkpacifica.com/

Pacifica is the one of the largest mental health platforms in the world. Having launched in January 2015, over 2.8 million people have now signed up to improve their health and wellbeing through our mobile applications. Come help us change the way people think about mental health.

Skills: Front-end: Angluar JS, Ionic, Cordova. Back-end: Java, Jetty, Postgresql, Redis, AWS

Please reach out to dale [at] thinkpacifica.com and include "HN" in the subject.

Pacifica Labs Inc. | Front-end Developer, Back-end Developer, Engineering Manager | Madison, WI but will hire remotely | Onsite or Remote | Full-time | https://thinkpacifica.com/

Pacifica is the one of the largest mental health platforms in the world. Having launched in January 2015, over 2.6 million people have now signed up to improve their health and wellbeing through our mobile applications. Come help us change the way people think about mental health. We also have some big announcements we will be making soon and are looking to expand the team quickly.

Skills: Front-end: Angluar JS, Ionic, Cordova. Back-end: Java, Jetty, Postgresql, Redis, AWS

Please reach out to dale [at] thinkpacifica.com and include "HN" in the subject.

Pacifica Labs Inc. | Front-end Developer, Back-end Developer, Engineering Manager | San Francisco, CA, Madison, WI | | Onsite or Remote | Full-time | https://thinkpacifica.com/

Pacifica is the one of the largest mental health platforms in the world. Having launched in January 2015, over 2.6 million people have now signed up to improve their health and wellbeing through our mobile applications. Come help us change the way people think about mental health. We also have some big announcements we will be making soon and are looking to expand the team quickly.

Skills: Front-end: HMTL, javascript, CSS, Angluar JS. Back-end: Java, Jetty, Postgresql, Redis, AWS

Please reach out to dale [at] thinkpacifica.com and include "HN" in the subject.

Pacifica Labs Inc. | Lead Front-end Developer | Madison, WI or San Diego, CA or San Francisco, CA | REMOTE or ONSITE

Pacifica is the fastest growing stress, anxiety and depression management application in the world with over 1.25 million registered users. We are looking for a self-driven individual to take over development of our mobile and web applications as we grow and expand our team. Experience with angular and corresponding web technologies is a must, and experience with hybrid mobile applications (Ionic/Cordova) is highly desirable. Ideally, you're also fluent in CSS, including CSS3 animations, and know all of the tools of the trade - node, bower, grunt, gulp, etc.

https://angel.co/pacifica-labs/jobs/128631-lead-front-end-de...

Pacifica Labs Inc. | Business Development Manager | San Francisco | http://thinkpacifica.com

Pacifica Labs Inc. | Marketing | San Francisco, San Diego, Madison, WI | http://thinkpacifica.com

Pacifica is the fastest growing stress and anxiety management application in the world. Based on cognitive behavioral therapy and mindfulness, over a million people have signed up since our public launch in January 2015. We're expanding our team as we continue to provide services to mental health professionals and other organizations. Please see additional information here: https://angel.co/pacifica-labs/jobs.

Our app Pacifica, http://thinkpacifica.com, is built on Ionic 1. It is currently showcased on both the Ionic and Cordova websites and we've see a fair amount of success with over a million registered users since launching last year.

Pacifica Labs Inc. | Lead Frontend Developer | SF, Remote

Pacifica Labs, a 500 Startups company, is the fastest growing stress and anxiety management platform in the world. Having launched January 2015, over 785k people have signed up to use our mobile applications. Come help us change the way people think about mental health.

Responsibilities:

Take over day-to-day development and architecture of hybrid mobile and web applications that help hundreds of thousands of people manage stress, anxiety and depression. Must be proficient in HTML and Javascript with an emphasis on AngularJS. Knowledge of front-end architectures (MVC, MVP, MVVC) is a must.

Technologies: Ionic/Angular, Cordova/Phonegap, Java, Objective-C, HTML,CSS

Contact: dale@thinkpacifica.com with the subject "HN"

Bucardo does this and the setup it a lot easier than most tools. I'm currently using it to migrate a live postgres database to another location but it can perform ETL as well.

EDIT: doesn't really address your point b) however.

Ha, thanks for that. I'll get it fixed.

You're right. We are not a substitute for therapy in cases like this. Pacifica works very well for people with mild to moderate anxiety, but in the more extreme cases (e.g. OCD, PTSD), it is necessary to be working with a professional. But a lot of people experience anxiety on a daily basis while maintaing a capability for self analysis.

I should have been clear: I don't know the OP. I was surprised to see this on HN today.

Sorry for the obligatory, somewhat self-serving post. Our startup, Pacifica (http://thinkpacifica.com), focuses on a few tools that help people identify these cognitive distortions. Specifically, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy defines a cycle relating how your thoughts affect your feelings, behaviors, and physical wellbeing (as a fully connected bidirectional graph). Understanding how your thoughts are distorted can better prepare you for the next time they crop up, helping you step outside this cycle. In many cases CBT has been shown to be as effective as psychiatric drugs in the short term, and even more effective in the long term as it helps people focus on the source of their anxieties. We're trying to take these same tools, proven in clinical practices all over the world, and apply them to a much broader audience.

Pacifica (http://thinkpacifica.com) is built on Ionic. We're also featured in iTunes right now, just a note that it's very possible to build beautiful hybrid applications. While the company isn't a success quite yet, we've been rejected from YC twice as well.

I apologize if this sounds a bit self-serving, but I use Pacifica (http://thinkpacifica.com), an app that we are building, in order to track what affects my sleep. I've struggled with insomnia for a while so understanding how things like caffeine or lack of exercise affect it has been useful. And then I'll also use our progressive muscle relaxation exercise when trying to fall asleep. The irony is not lost on me that building a company around an anxiety app is also creating additional anxiety in my life...

Our app Pacifica (http://thinkpacifica.com) is built with Cordova and the Ionic Framework. It's far from a crappy experience. I think that too often people pick these frameworks and assume that it's a substitute for good design. You still need to put in the effort.

There's also the fact that the bar is a bit lower to get an app finished and released with something like Ionic. So you might see more apps that aren't quite up to par, but that doesn't mean that it isn't possible to create something beautiful with them.

I actually wrote an article for Gamasutra about this when they were first launching: http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/DaleBeermann/20090327/83618/G.... Still, when I first tried it in their demo booth I was really impressed. But the data center was only 60 miles away. As soon as you get too far from the data center, there are actual physical limitations of being able to accomplish this effectively.

I think "manic" describes things well. The highs are very high and the lows are very low. And if you're just floating along in the middle, you're always wanting more. It's one of the reasons trying to do this on your own is so hard. Ideally when you're having an off day your cofounder is there to pick you back up. In this sense, being in sync with your cofounder isn't always a good thing.

On any given day, it's difficult to manage everything. When you have customer service, outreach, growth, and development to do, something gets dropped. There's never quite enough time.

Then there's the difficulty in taking time off. When you try to make time for other parts of your life, you're always looking at the things that you didn't get to and thinking about when you're going to do them. I don't go to as many happy hours as I used to; I certainly don't organize them. I'm not playing volleyball right now. I try to workout, but it's hard to tear yourself away from the computer when it'll just take another hour to finish your current task. It affects your conversations, your relationships, your health, everything. It is consuming.

On any given weekday, I work at least 10 hours. Generally it's about 12-14. I make sure to take a night or two off to spend time with my fiancee. On the weekend, I try to fit in time with her as well but I'll still get in at least 4 hours each day, sometimes more like 8.

I get stressed about money a lot. We're bootstrapped so not everyone is in this situations. In any case, everything is framed in terms of how many months we have left. That 12 dollar sandwich? That's a couple days of server time. An expensive car repair? That's a whole month of our runway.

And yet, it's the most rewarding thing you can ever do. You get to build something from nothing. People use it. They talk to you about it. You are making the decisions. And it isn't going to last forever. It'll last for a long time, but it'll get better. But most importantly, I wake up every morning without an alarm and am eager to get back to work.

Would you be able to send an email to info (at) thinkpacifica (dot) com from the email address you created the account with. If you could let us know which device you're on, we'll check it out as soon as we can. Thanks and sorry for the trouble.

Christine is our advisor, and an awesome one at that. We're certainly not trying to hide her.

We created Pacifica because my co-founder, Chris, has struggled with anxiety his whole life. He came to me saying that we should try to do an app based on CBT. Personally, I've had insomnia for quite a while and I was really interested in how CBT might apply to both of our situations. We did a ton of research and Christine was one of the people we reached out to to make sure that we were adhering to the best practices in the profession.

I'm sorry you see this as snake oil. We've really tried to build an app that fits into the daily lives of people with anxiety. Furthermore, it's designed from the perspective of someone with anxiety to provide tools that you can actually use throughout your day. Is there a particular aspect of the app that you don't like or is it simply the site itself?

We have taken that line out. When we put it up, I guess I saw it a bit differently. I think you're right though.

We really are trying to do right by the FDA. We'll go through the process to get Class I clearance as soon as we have the resources to do so. Until then, we really are not trying to make claims about treating specific disorders.

As for being based on CBT, I have not seen anything that specifically addresses that type of claim. Put another way, we're trying to help people understand the cycle between thoughts, behaviors, and feelings. To us, that's the core of CBT.

I like the idea of having a roadmap. We'll try to get something up once things die down a bit.

1) Right, unless you can perform voice identification having the recording doesn't matter. Your voice could be used as an identifier though, which is why I mention it. I'm sure we could do something to modulate the recording with some filters, but part of the therapy is in hearing yourself talk, so it would be a bit self defeating. As for privacy, yes, it's clear we're going to need to make a few tweaks.

2) I think allowing the user to download the data would be good for the roadmap :)

3) No, it isn't. It was actually something I put in place this week and we just haven't gotten any info on it up yet.

4) Hopefully sometime soon :)

Thanks for your comments everyone. I'm trying to keep up with them all. A little more information:

Pacifica is a hybrid application, built on the Ionic Framework (http://ionicframework.com/). We've been pretty happy with Ionic, it's the main reason we were able to release on Android and iOS simultaneously. Thanks to Max and the Drifty team for creating a great platform.

There are a lot of comments and questions about privacy and compliance. I'll try to summarize some of my answers:

We don't technically store what's called Protected (or Private) Health Information. This is because Pacifica is a self-help tool and PHI is defined as originating from a healthcare professional. That being said, we are taking steps to treat our data as if it were PHI. We have a signed Business Associated Agreement with Amazon and are trying to operate as if we were HIPAA compliant (we technically are, in the same way that any company that doesn't store PHI is HIPAA compliant).

Regarding privacy and security: yes, we're in the cloud. Specifically, on AWS. While this may be contentious, we believe that there's no reason this is less secure than if you were hosted in a local colocation facility. Amazon has pretty rigorous requirements for who has access to machines and who can access data on those machines. Many of their services are HIPAA compliant, and they certainly take this extremely seriously.

In addition, we do try to make sure everyone's data is as safe as possible. The mobile applications communicate with our servers over HTTPS. We're using Elastic Load Balancers but don't terminate SSL at the ELB, it passes through to our own server so Amazon doesn't have the private keys. Recordings are stored encrypted in S3, and our RDS instances are also encrypted. There's more that we can do (as there always is), but we wanted to provide a little information about what we are currently trying to do to protect things. We welcome any additional suggestions.

Thanks Mark, we've actually read your HIPAA policies. And yes, you're correct, there's a lot more to HIPAA compliance than how you store your data. We will continue to move down the path of treating everything as being PHI even though it isn't currently.

That's fair. As it's our launch day, there are a few things like this that we'll get in place as quickly as we can.

For what it's worth until we can do that, here's a quick rundown: all data is transmitted over https. While we use Elastic Load Balancers we don't terminate SSL at the load balancer so data makes to our web servers before being decrypted. Any audio recordings are stored encrypted in S3, and our RDS instances are also encrypted. Everything runs in a Virtual Private Cloud. Each service (ELB, EC2 instances, RDS, S3) runs in its own security group with IAM user roles that can be removed and reissued if needed.

We'll try to get this information up on the site fairly soon.

Unfortunately there isn't a lot of guidance here. We store your email address, which doesn't have to be an identifier as it can be anonymous, but we have to have a way to communicate with you. And we do ask for a name, but you can put whatever you want.

As mentioned in another comment, PHI is defined as something that originates from a healthcare provider. Some of the restrictions for what we can say the app does actually come from the FDA. We don't say that we treat specific anxiety disorders (we call it "stress and anxiety"), and we don't ask our users for that type of information. But it really is a bit of a grey area. It's something that we're acutely aware of though and are trying to follow all the guidelines we can find.