Case study · Stillwater Health · Denver, CO
A recovery companion patients open every single day
Phone and watch app that guides post-surgical patients through fourteen days of recovery, with AI summaries that keep clinicians a step ahead.
Industry
Digital health
Services
iOS & watchOS app, Android app, AI triage summaries, Clinician dashboard
Platforms
iOS · watchOS · Android · Web
Timeline
16 weeks
Year
2025
91%
Daily check-in adherence
4.8★
App Store rating
38%
Fewer missed follow-ups
12k
Patients onboarded
The challenge
Stillwater’s orthopaedic clinics handed patients a printed recovery plan and hoped for the best. By day three most people stopped following it, nurses spent afternoons on follow-up calls, and complications surfaced late. The team needed a companion that patients would actually keep opening, and a way to see who was drifting off plan before it became a readmission.
What we did
Four decisions that made the difference.
Designed around the glance
Check-ins start on the wrist: a two-tap prompt at the right time of day, synced to the phone. The phone app carries the plan, exercise videos, wound photos and pain scores, and works fully offline.
HealthKit and sensors as evidence
Steps, heart rate and sleep flow in automatically, so patients report less and clinicians see more. Every reading is timestamped against the surgery date and the care protocol.
AI summaries for the care team
Instead of a firehose of data, nurses get a ranked morning list: who is trending well, who needs a call, and why. Summaries cite the underlying data and never make clinical decisions on their own.
Built for a regulated environment
Encrypted at rest and in transit, audit-logged access and a BAA-ready hosting setup, delivered with documentation the compliance team could sign off on.
The outcome
Adherence climbed from an estimated 40% on paper to 91% in the app. Follow-up calls dropped by more than a third, and the clinical team now reviews a prioritised list each morning instead of chasing patients. Stillwater rolled the app out to three additional clinics within six months of launch.
“Our previous vendor spent longer on estimates than FinchSol spent shipping the watch app. More importantly, patients actually use it.”
Dr. Priya Raman
Head of Clinical Operations, Stillwater Health
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