Blackburn Labs

I'm the CEO and Founder of a health tech startup.

I'm building a novel healthcare web application. I work in medicine, and am not technical, so I was looking for a development team that was knowledgeable and experienced on the subject matter, while being supportive of someone with a non-technical background.

At the first meeting Rob was coming up with ideas to help our team and company. Not only was he thinking about the technical build at hand, but he is forward thinking and able to anticipate what other challenges we may face down the road. He offered concrete ideas on how we might strategize to meet those challenges.

Rob and his team broke down the proposed build into concrete steps, then narrowed those to 2 week sprints. Before they even began Rob shared some documents and guidelines on how to obtain BAAs and maintain cybersecurity with the various technology we were using.

Rob oversaw the project. A senior developer and QA tester played key roles.

They are on target to complete the build several weeks ahead of schedule. The full application is not yet build and live, due to regulatory steps needed before launch.

Their team is very flexible and dynamic. We used a combination of email, slack, google sheets, and figma to communicate. Everyone on the team was crystal clear with communication, and very timeline with responsiveness.

They have an admirable combination of big-picture strategic thinking and uncanny attention to detail. He's gone above and beyond simply carrying out the contracted work. He's offered help and support with planning for fundraising, he's insightful on ways to protect our IP and maintain security, he and his team are all around great people to work with.

This may be feedback for myself, but I'd welcome some best practices or FAQs for expectations from me and my team up front, particularly since I have a non-technical background. We've been very open with communication thus far and it's worked quite well.

I am on the board of directors of the Partnership to Reduce Cancer in Rhode Island. We're a statewide advocacy organization that helps cancer patients by providing a list of resources on our website and how to connect with them.

We needed a software company to develop a dental oncology knowledge center. We didn't have much money to invest, but we hoped to get the project off the ground to attract more funding.

Blackburn Labs set up, configured, and programmed a chat box that will be integrated into our website. The goal was for site users to use it to find the proper resources for their questions. Blackburn Labs has just completed the initial process. They also provided suggestions on how to organize the resources on our site.

We worked with four teammates from Blackburn Labs, including Robert (CEO), Julie (Chief Data Scientist), a developer, and a student.

Our contract initially set the cost at $24,000, but we've only incurred $8,000 in charges with Blackburn Labs.

Our engagement with Blackburn Labs began in March 2021 and is estimated to end in June 2022.

The beta testing phase should begin in June 2022, and through Blackburn Labs' efforts, we've attracted an additional $15,000 in private foundation funding. We're well on the way to getting this project out to the public.

Blackburn Labs began the project before we even signed their first paycheck. Typically, we use Zoom calls and emails to communicate — we have regular calls to regroup and discuss the project. They've kept us well informed throughout the project.

We love the flexibility of Blackburn Labs' knowledge base. They've done other health care projects across the country, so they understood our objective right away when we contacted them. Money has never been the focus of our partnership; Blackburn Labs is interested in executing our project for its merit. Their team focuses on delivering solutions, not ensuring clients fit into their work framework.

I can't think of anything for Blackburn Labs to improve.

I'd advise customers to do preliminary research into their subject matter, so when they have their first conversation with Blackburn Labs, the main focus can be on defining the scope of work. The more customers can articulate their needs, the better the solutions Blackburn Labs can create.

We’re an early-stage telemedicine platform company. I’m the co-founder of the company, and I worked in R&D.

We brought on Blackburn Labs to build our app.

We came to Blackburn Labs with a very specific plan of what we wanted. They then did the full coding and development for the app itself. We collaborated with them on the design and layout of it, but they essentially did the actual coding, set up the servers, and structured the timing for all of the phases.

We’ve worked with five teammates throughout the project.

I found them to Clutch and reached out to them based on some of the feedback I saw. We also talked to about four other developers across the country, but we felt that Blackburn Labs understood what we were trying to do and respected that we were coming in with a solid understanding of our market.

We’ve spent around $100,000 so far.

We’ve been working with them since April 2020.

Blackburn Labs takes pride in the work they’re doing. We can tell that extra effort goes into the way that they’ve designed the product and the process with which they move it forward.

Blackburn Labs holds regular meetings, and they invite us to join if we have time to hear where the development is at. They also use Trello, which allows us to follow along and helps prioritize certain aspects of the development. It’s been an interactive process.

They understood and were accommodating to what we were trying to accomplish, which is why we chose them. Blackburn Labs respected the experience that we had in our specific space, which was important.

No, they’ve been great. We’ll probably continue working with them throughout this project.

Communicate often with them.

I’m the CEO of Proven Behavior Solutions. We’re an outpatient health care practice that provides behavioral and speech therapy for individuals with autism, mostly children.

Our industry is a unique hybrid between healthcare and education. I’ve found that off-the-shelf software solutions don’t work for our needs. We had finally reached a point where we were too big to manage everything efficiently on Excel. I wanted a custom software solution that would be more user-friendly, so I reached out to Blackburn Labs.

We already had a utilization management system for all of our services. They were able to take everything we built in Excel and built an app that would automate everything that we were already doing.

Rob was our main point of contact and there were a few other team members on our project.

I contacted a few different agencies in the area and asked for estimates. I found that Blackburn Labs worked with a local hospital, which was a huge indicator that they understood healthcare and the challenges we faced. So they were clearly a better fit than some of the larger software companies in the city.

Our contract is $16,000.

We started working with them in February 2020 and it’s ongoing.

We’ve already launched the first version of the app, and we’re moving forward to the second version. Even though their quote was lower in price than the other companies I spoke to, Blackburn Labs still delivered high-quality work. Since seeing their work, it turned out to be a way better deal than I thought.

It was very agile and we used Trello to manage all the workflow. So I could see what the other team members were doing. There is a rep on the team who has a background in big data, so we were able to see the analytic side.

They deserve to be highlighted for having expertise in the healthcare space., I was really impressed with their attempt to understand what we needed, even in unfamiliar areas. They never bushed over things or generalized, they continued to hone their expertise in the healthcare industry.

Not at this point.

Just like with any project, make sure expectations are clear upfront. Additionally, the more complex the project is, and the more people involved, the more critical it is to understand how communication flows.

I’m the CEO of Talerics Consulting, a biomedical informatics company. We provide consulting services for academic medical centers and other biotechnical organizations.

We’re currently partnering with an Ivy League medical school, and needed an outside partner to provide technical consulting.

Blackburn Labs supported our project with the medical school, which involves single-cell analysis to serve the school’s cell-sequencing technology.

We worked exclusively with Rob.

I’d engaged with Rob in a previous project, and I really admired his work. I was impressed by his skills, presentation style, and ability to listen to users and gather requirements for software development. Based on that experience, I thought he would be a great fit for this project.

We spent between $5,000-$10,000 on the engagement.

The project took place between November–December 2019.

Rob delivered the highest level of results, going beyond our expectations. He’s greatly impacted our ability to plan the project, and though we haven’t started the implementation process yet, we’re extremely pleased with the work he’s done. He’s had a significant impact on the project.

Our project manager is an expert in what he does. We had weekly meetings with Rob, where he presented his work through PowerPoint, and we, in turn, provided feedback and asked additional questions. These meetings helped us build an overview of available technologies, as well as construct plans involving timelines and cost for the next phase of our project. It was very effective.

The aspect of Rob’s work we appreciated the most was his willingness to teach us about his process. He always explained why he recommended a certain technology over another in a clear, concise way that was very helpful to us. It’s one of the reasons why I’d like to continue working with Rob in future engagements.

There’s nothing that comes to mind.

Provide as much information as possible. Rob can work independently, but the more he knows the better to ensure you’re both aligned. His work is very thorough, and it would cause a fair amount of inefficiency if he went in a different direction than you wanted.