Engineering at PicnicHealth

Our mission is to put patients in control of their own health [records]. Everything we do is patient-centric.

We are here to improve everyone's health by unlocking the power of good medical data. An individual patient who has access to their personal medical data can receive better and higher quality care. We go one step further: PicnicHealth gives patients the opportunity to contribute to the leading research on their specific disease area. We’ve established over a dozen partnerships with life sciences companies (including 7 of the top 10 biopharma in the US) to advance science and develop breakthroughs in treatments. When we give voice to our collective medical journey, by making our records available together, we accelerate research and access to treatments for all.

With full consent from our users (we are always transparent and protect our patients’ privacy), we de-identify and share medical record data that is valuable to commercial and non-commercial research. For example, we partnered with Genentech to create FlywheelMS, a research study that aims to get a clearer picture of how and why multiple sclerosis (MS) impacts different people in different ways. Users sign up with PicnicHealth (we waive the fee for 5 years) and consent to sharing their anonymous data. Putting all of this information together for a diverse group of MS patients will allow researchers to see patterns that no one doctor can see on their own.

We are obsessed with building a solution that patients actually find useful (check out our demo!) – and doing it in a way that puts patients at the center. Since we are all patients ourselves, we make sure we are building a product that we trust with our own medical records. We believe that leading with our patient-centered values of transparency, data privacy, and full patient control will deepen the trust that patients have in PicnicHealth.

We aren’t just data-driven, we are data-obsessed. #GoodDataMatters

When patients sign up, we receive their consent to retrieve and aggregate their medical records. Our records platform is built around human-in-the-loop machine learning to take the hundreds of pages of scans and faxes of medical records per patient, digitize them, then extract and organize key medical concepts. For our patients and research partners, we deliver structured, queryable data to help patients identify key information in their records and help research partners find deeper insights that were previously only unlocked by manual, painstaking analysis of records. In each of these three key pillars, data is a first class product that we are obsessed with. Like most companies, we use data to power our product, technical decisions, strategy, and roadmaps to ensure that we are delivering value to our customer; but where we truly differ is that data is the product that we acquire (with consent), refine, and deliver. Our data is used to accelerate research and treatment programs. We believe in the transformational power of data – for patients, researchers, and our team.

One of our core values is that we ‘Take Ownership, Together.’

In order to do that, we must have an environment that fosters trust based on autonomy, clarity, and accountability. We have a shared mindset to “see something, do something, and bring people along in doing it.” Data flows through every aspect of our company: our sales team works to help prospective partners understand the value they can get from working with PicnicHealth data; our Patient team helps patients work with us to unlock and retrieve their data, empowering them in their care; our Records and Operations teams work to digitize, extract, and organize valuable, key medical concepts from the records; our Clinical and Quantitative Science team works with our Data team to ensure we can deliver data that meets our research partners’ goals. As a result, our success as a company is closely tied to our ability to collaborate across teams. The quality of our product is directly tied to our ability to collaborate effectively. The only way to grow and scale is to empower everyone to be able to identify and act on opportunities, which makes working together a default expectation.

About 30% of our team at PicnicHealth has children.

We know that for our team to do its best work, we need to make sure that we have strong support structures in place for the parents on our team. It is a priority that parents are able to have the support to balance work and family needs, which has been especially challenging during the global pandemic. We work hard to maintain open communication and flexibility in regards to parenting. Whether you are taking care of a newborn or a teenager, we understand that balancing work and family is critical and something we want to make sure you are comfortable with and able to do. You won’t get the stink eye if you say you have to jump off to take care of your family!

As a company, we provide 14 weeks of paid leave and full benefits for birthing parents and 8 weeks paid leave and full benefits for non-birthing parents. You can also take an additional 4 weeks of unpaid leave. We also want to make sure you are comfortable as you re-enter the workforce. We come up with a re-entry onboarding plan, an optional parent buddy, and a stipend for you to use (because kids are NOT cheap). We want you to succeed as a parent and as a team member at PicnicHealth.

We know you do your best work when you have power over your own schedule.

Given the pandemic, we’ve shifted to a hybrid in-office/remote policy. We’re being intentional about ensuring it works for everyone and aren’t afraid to experiment and make changes as needed. For instance, we have a quarterly “convergence week” where the entire company is encouraged to come together for quarterly planning and - maybe more importantly - fun team events that help colleagues connect with one another as humans with interests and lives beyond PicnicHealth. Plus, functional or project-based teams have the autonomy to plan onsite retreats or design sessions, and do so at different cadences.

Aside from standups and biweekly sprint-plannings and all-hands meetings, we do our best to avoid regular, mandatory meetings. We stay in tune with what everyone is working on through our biweekly demos. Instead of meeting to tell everyone what we’re currently working on, we spend time showing what we’ve built (Show and Tell is still as exciting as it was when we were younger!). Engineers demo their new features, Ops showcase their new models, and our Commercial team shares new partnerships. We understand that you have commitments outside of work and individual needs with regards to working hours. As long as you’re getting your stuff done, do what works best for you.

Last but not least, we provide an unlimited PTO policy. Working at a startup can be intense at times and we want to ensure that you are taking the time you need to recharge. We believe that being your best self at work requires that you are committed to taking care of yourself and taking time to get away.

We will win through innovation.

Innovation is driven by insights from a team of passionate, curious, and diverse individuals, who can show up as whole, quirky human beings and solve hard problems together. To spark that innovation, we align around shared goals and values and create a space for what makes you you, where your journey and your story matter. Our differences in identities, interests, backgrounds, and experiences bring with them a variety of creative ideas, knowledge, skills, thoughts, and techniques. We need you at the table.

We take our work seriously, but we try not to take ourselves too seriously. As we’ve learned from the patients we support or from our own medical journeys, levity and joy – especially in the face of daunting challenges ahead – keep us resilient and help make solving those problems a little easier. Laughing with each other and embracing mistakes as learning opportunities helps us be more creative and resilient as we work together to change the future of all patients and medical research.

Our leadership team takes their responsibility to create space for others very seriously. We are among the few companies with a female CEO & Co-Founder and a number of other key leadership roles (COO, Head of People), and have LGBTQ+ representation within our senior leadership (COO). While having diverse leadership is important, we recognize as we grow we need to be conscious of creating opportunity and extending pathways so that we can not only win, but win with you.

We’re invested in seeing engineers grow professionally and personally.

As a company, we want to make sure everyone joining our team has the ability to personally and professionally grow in their roles over time. When you join PicnicHealth, we start with a 30- and 90-day onboarding and goal setting plan – setting clear goals and expectations with you and your team. We have bi-annual performance reviews to reflect on your contributions, impact, and growth, as well as opportunities for improvement. Working with your manager, you’ll set forward-looking goals aligned with upcoming projects and interests. We want to make sure you’re engaged with the work you’re doing and continuously learning new skills.

We also provide external opportunities to promote your growth, including life coaching, flexible work arrangements (see above), and accommodating different working styles to understand how you get work done best while supporting your work life balance.

We’ve promoted many people to leadership roles in the last two years.

As a quickly growing company, we’ve been fortunate to have both the need and the opportunity to promote from within. In fact, several team members were promoted to leadership positions: Steve (Director of Engineering), Justin (Engineering Manager), Faye (Design Lead), Andrew (VP of Sales), Xerxes (Managing Director of Sales), and Sarah (Head of Production Operations). We’ve seen how well it’s worked to develop our own talents’ growth and it’s just the beginning.

In exciting news, we recently raised a $60M Series C! Since the launch of our research platform in 2020, we’ve powered the creation of patient-centered real-world data cohorts in hematology, neurology, and rare diseases to help advance treatments and cures. This additional funding will help us build 30 new patient-centered real-world data cohorts, as well as continue to invest in improving the process of getting patients timely access to up-to-date medical records. If you’re passionate about joining a mission-driven team, don’t hesitate to check out our open roles!