 and welcome to Connecting Hawaii Business on Think Tech Hawaii. My name is Kathleen Lee and I am your host for this program. Today I am excited to have on the show the president of Chart Buddies, Shialito Mathias Schwartz. You go by CeCe. Is that correct? Ooh, I do. Yes. Hey, this is exciting. So welcome to the show, CeCe. Thanks for having me, Kathleen. I'm excited to be here. And I am excited to have you on. Tell our viewers about yourself. OK, like Kathleen said, I go by CeCe. And I was born and raised in Hawaii. I'm the daughter of a first generation immigrant parents from the Philippines. I have an older brother, a younger sister, but I'm married. And I have a son who is in college and a daughter in seventh grade just started middle school. And I have two dogs. That's awesome. Are they around? No, I put them away. OK. Especially for this specifically. Thank you. I know we talked about this earlier. So we met through a mutual friend, Marlon, who was just interviewed on the show. And he said he also had a hand in helping out with Chart Buddies. Is that correct? Yeah, he played a huge part, actually. He was the one who approached me. But I've known him for a very long time. He has his company, White Space Studios. And he actually developed our website for another company that me and my husband started a while ago. But that could be another show. He approached me because at the beginning of creating this Chart Buddy system, they were looking at who they could approach and how they could get this out. And I was newly elected as the president at the Philippine Nurses Association of Hawaii. And he thought maybe working with law and profits would be a good idea to introduce his product. And maybe the members would find it valuable. But in a first conversation, it just spiraled in a good way. And I started saying, hey, you know what you need to do? And then he just went on from there. And then he pulled me in. And I had a meeting. And I met the other co-founder and the developer of this system. His name is Manak. And another friend of theirs, Joe Nofo. So it's the four of us that really make up Chart Buddies. We're the team. They invited me on board. And kind of been a journey and been a wild ride ever since. It's fun. It's fun. Yeah. That's awesome. OK, so I was looking through your website. And I'm going by the description that you folks have when it comes to Chart Buddies. It's an efficient, electronic health records system. And it eliminates redundant data by previous bills and other forms. Tell us more about that. Like, what was the issue? I kind of stated it based on what you guys have. But what does that mean exactly? So let's talk about charting first. Like, what is charting? Oh, gosh, so charting. I mean, when people are nurses here that we're charting, whether you're in the hospital setting or in the community, it's gotten to a point where it consumes you and it takes up so much of your time where you're almost like not paying attention to your patient anymore. You're kind of moving away from that because there is so much documentation that you need to capture from that visit. And so it's almost moved away from really it being patient-centered because we're having to chart so much and document so much. And I'm not here to say that you're going to be eliminating that because that's really not realistic at all. However, with Chart Buddies, the whole goal was to cut charting time down to make a system that was a lot more efficient so that there's no redundancy. I mean, I'd worked on charting systems where I'd enter information and then I'd swipe to the next slide. And it's like I had to input the exact same information. Again, it didn't auto-populate. So those were the things that I would mention. And I would say it would be so good if you could do this. Or a problem I found with charting is this. And if we could address that, that would be amazing. And so it kind of kept evolving. And with the charting system, yeah, we really want to help people move away from paper charting, get on board with the digital type of charting, electronic, because it really does avoid duplication and really errors. We don't want errors in charting. And that's something that they hire auditors to do. Like a job that people do just to go through and audit. And so that was really one of the things that we had envisioned for when we created this. But keeps evolving because there's always things that we can add to it or it can make better. And that'll probably never end just as long as there's new things that are coming up that need to be captured, that need to be documented. But it's manageable. We try to capture a lot of the important data that we need and simplified it. So we only chart ones. And it auto-fills everything. So your description on the founders of the company is that it was designed by a registered nurse and a case manager. Is that you or those two different people? Actually, Marlon and Mac. Mac is an RN that is really focused in IT. And he codes. So I think that's where his wheelhouse is. And then when I came on board, I'm an RN case manager. But yeah, I've been in the home and community-based setting. I've been in manager care. And so I've seen and I've tried different types of charting. And I was even charting by paper if I'm dating myself. But yeah, back when I first started nursing, I was still charting with 10. Yeah. Let's go back to that. So tell us more about your background as in the nursing industry. How did you get into it? Oh, my gosh. So it runs in my family. And so I'm a Filipino nurse. So is my mom. And so is my sister. You've ever watched Jocoy follow me? But no, my mom. Yeah, she's now retired. But she was a nurse at St. Francis in Liliha, which is no longer there. But she was a cardiac ICU nurse for years before she opened up her own case management agency before retiring. My younger sister, she is a, now she is a clinical nurse educator. But before that, she was a bedside nurse trauma orthopedic. And so, and then myself, I work as a care coordinator at Queens in the Noura Life Institute. And so case management is really like my love. I've done it in the Oregon community settings, where I'm working with people, with families. And then now in the acute setting, very different ways. But it's still very patient-centered. It's including the patient and their family and their support in trying to create a discharge plan that's safe for them once they discharge. And the beauty, I think, of having had been in the community and now in the acute is I see both sides and what the gap is. And so Hawaii is the island. We don't have an infinite amount of people. And so it's really difficult trying to find a place for them, which leads me to care homes. There's a lot of care homes in Hawaii. But believe it or not, we still have a hard time finding places for our patients who are discharging to go. And that was the reason why I also got into that. And I'm really close to getting my license to operate a care home. And it's kind of timely because while I was going through the application process, I saw the different forms that I needed to do and what would constitute a binder for all my clients. And pages and pages that have probably just been Xerox copies over and over, photocopied again and again. And so that really helped build chart buddies, too, because that's the clientele that we were targeting, the care home operators. And there are many of them. And as far as I know, the majority are doing the binder and the paper charting system. And so we have a large market out there to reach the chart buddies. Let me launch off of that. So currently, who are the companies or even individuals who are using chart buddies? You already mentioned nursing homes. Are you able to disclose particular hospitals as well? No, we're not quite there yet. And I think because when we started with the care home operators, we knew that they were heavily relying on paper charting. And because I was just going through my own license and looking at the forms, I'm like, this is a good place to start. And we found out that, yeah, they're actually, the department of health was moving very soon to digital. And so we're like, I think this is a perfect opportunity. And in me going through this process, I joined an association. It's called ARCA for short, which is the Alliance for Residential Care Administrators. And once a year, they have a big education event. And they have vendors there and all their members come and get contact first, which is required. And so I reached out to the president and asked if chart buddies could come. And that was our first time really introducing our product and our service to a large audience. And so it was interesting because the very mixed crowd, a lot of them are nearing retirement age, if not already retirement past retirement age. But then there were some that were also very new at the care home business. So they were a bit younger. And so the feedback and how they received the product was, it was very vast. It was definitely, I mean, we got our first client from there. And so she saw some value in what we were presenting. And ever since then, over a year ago, she's been one of chart buddies. And I think what's amazing to hear is she's saying that it literally cut her charting time, and which is the goal, so yeah. How long does charting typically take? I know it's a case like, I wouldn't say something like, it's couldn't have. Can you give us an idea of how impactful that is? Is it like from like hours to an hour? Well, when I was working out in the field, and this is when I was working with a managed care system here, UnitedHealthcare, and I would do field visits. And when I would go see them, I'd take down all the data, and I'd type as much as I could, not feeling like I'm only treating my computer screen. I try to look at the patient too, of course. But I gather on my data, and it was about an hour and a half to two hour visit. And then when I go home, it's another two to three hours, just charting and getting everything. And that's just one setting. I can't speak for other people and how they're charting, depending on if they're a home health agency. And that takes time too, because I used to work with a home health agency, and the field nurses would be out there trying really hard to get through their charting quickly during that visit. But at the end of their shift, they're still taking their charting home, and that's less time with your family. And that's unfortunate. To that, it can't just be like, what do you work, and do the best you can, and once you're done, you're done. But it follows you home charting, follows you sometime. So let me, OK, I want to go off of that, right? So you're addressing this need for efficiency, which I think is wonderful, especially when it comes to the medical field. What are some challenges that you ran into when starting a business, especially here in Hawaii, and especially with a service or a product like yours that is innovative and might not be, like you mentioned, people aren't too familiar with that yet? Yeah. Well, I mean, starting a business in Hawaii has its own challenges, right, because we're our way in an island. And there couldn't be so many failure points, but it really comes down to, I think, the team and your support and the vision behind it. Some of the things that I feel have made it a little bit difficult was just reaching the people and getting our product and service in front of them. It's the marketing aspect, right? You could have this wonderful product, but you've got to find the people to present it to or to sell it to. And I think that's why it was critical for us when we were just starting to have this really nice package product and launch it out in front of a crowd of people who were like, ooh. But then again, like I said, that first time we did that, there were people who were probably digital immigrant. And then there were some who were digital native and the ones who were digital immigrant were like, what if we have trouble and it crashes and what do we do? So it was a very, it helped us really learn how to answer those kind of questions, because that's the reality of it, right? They're going to be a little bit scared of that innovation, even though they know that electronic charting is nothing new, but we were trying to present it in a way that's like, nothing's really changed the information, the questions are the same. We've even created it so that if you still want to print the forms out and you hit the button, it'll print out in the form that you're used to seeing that you've been using for years that the DOH actually provided to you. So when they saw that, they're like, oh, okay, it's familiar to them. But it's really a matter of like, you know, kind of feeling those questions answering it in a way that they understand. And I think it's just the comfort level, but we'll go to a class at LCC where they're taking the arch modules so that they can open their care home and they're a little bit younger and they've probably also been in the hospital setting used to charting electronically. And, you know, they're not even done getting that license and they're like, I want that. They know they need it and they know that it's gonna help them and they don't want to even start with making the binders and then transitioning over to an electronic health system. They're like, yeah, I know what that can do for me. And, you know, so I think it's catching on slowly, but, you know, I think at some point people will be like, wow, this is super helpful and that's really what we want to do. We want to help the industry in that way. Yeah. You know, and I mean, that's just one part. That's the care home, right? And so there's still like the cluster homes and then there's all the other agencies. So there's a lot of people can still do that. We've got to kind of focus, you know, where we are right now for the people. Yeah. Yeah. You mentioned one benefit for some of your clients which is cutting, charting time in half. Are you able to share other success stories that you may have that stands out in your head when it comes to folks using chart buddies? Yeah, I think what they're just most impressed with is, you know, when somebody is willing to try it, right? They're moving and this is another client and she's not very tech savvy, but the more she started to use it and the more familiar she became with our system, the more confidence started to fill. So to me, I like those kind of success stories, you know, because then she feels like, you know, I can do it. And, you know, when somebody feels successful at something, it's always a win, right? And so those are the kind of things that we're also looking for too, you know, that's gonna be very different from somebody who's always, you know, very used to being on, you know, devices like that, but for somebody who is transitioning over from like paper charting for like years and years and then learning it step by step, you know, granted it was a learning curve, but then, you know, the more they did it, the more familiar they got with it and then, you know, they started to get more, they're quicker at it. And so I think they felt successful at it. So that's good, you know, we like that. They think that's awesome. Cece, what are some future plans or aspirations or goals that you may have for Chart Buddy since you are the president of the company current? How old are you? I don't know if I want to describe it, but I think that I'm gonna say like, you know, 1147s. And now if people watching this know what the 1147 is, it's like this functional assessment tool that we have to complete. And I do it in the hospital setting. I've done it in home and community base. I've done it, you know, in other settings. And it's just something that people have to do. It's this one form. And what's a little bit annoying or a lot annoying about it is, you know, you have to log in. And sometimes if you're not saving all the time, then you lose your debt. And that's a real pain when you're like doing medications and you have to be tight certain things. Or, you know, once you submit it, you wait for approval. There's different ways that it's gonna be either like, you know, whether it's complete, submitted, in review, approved, so all these things. But you always have to go back and check the status. But unless it's on the forefront of your mind, you're not always gonna wanna go back or remember to do that. So I was telling Matt, like, wouldn't it be great if, you know, and I'm like, how might we have something where it's on our phone or some notification that says, hey, ding, it's like it's been submitted. Oh, it's incomplete. You need to go back and fix this. And how much quicker that process could be if people were alerted and then they could just go back and fix it and then submit it. And that would cut down on time. And, you know, I think that's something he's working on. But, you know, it's just my vision. And he's the tech guy. So he's probably like, oh, we'll see. We'll see. He's great. He's brilliant. And I know he can do it. So, yeah, we're hoping that we can, you know, launch that part of chart buddies. But there's so many things that, you know, we keep finding that we wanna keep prodding and we just wanna make sure that it's gonna be valued, you know, to the user. That's ultimately what we want. And we don't want to be overwhelmed anymore. Just get like, oh, it's too much for me. Enough. Right. Because that's all we're addressing, right? Yeah, we wanna say, you know, a simplification. Exactly. Well, Cece, what are some lessons that you learned during the process of building, starting and launching this business that you would like to share with folks out there that may wanna do something similar to what you folks have done? I, you know, a lot of it was just getting to that right ice point, yeah, for our service. Because when we're creating it and we know that this is so amazing and we're like, oh, wow, we could just make it, you know. But then really, we have to kind of go back to what we were trying to do. And, you know, at the curve that we wanna help people and we wanna make it accessible to as many people. So, you know, I think we've arrived at a price point that is very fair. And when people see that, you know, they're like, oh, wow, this is such a great party for that. And that kind of, that took a long time though to get to that point. So I think with any company or any business, you know, that something they probably have to go through, like figure out like, is this the right audience? Is this the right, you know, price point? You know, is this something that they're gonna receive and continue to, you know, be a loyal customer of because this is the price that we're offering it and the value that we're providing. Yeah, it hasn't been easy, that's for sure. But it's been fun and I have a great form to kind of keep, you know, bouncing ideas off of. And so I think that helps when you have like a supportive team that sees the vision also and willing to listen. And if they're not in agreement, like, yeah, let's talk it out and let's see how we can make this better. I think not looking at ourselves, if I kind of looking at what really is the goal of it going forward and what we wanna accomplish, would be huge, you know, with any business. Yeah. Well, what is there? Is there anything else that you would like to add that we haven't covered or that I haven't asked you about regarding chart buddies? Yeah, much else. Well, people can get started. Yeah, well, no, we, it's an installation fee of, you know, which includes the actual laptop that we give to them and then it's a subscription. Yeah, but the thing is that what's great about it is, you know, when people are like, you know, can you do this to it? And they take that feedback very seriously and they will make the updates and the changes if they know that it's gonna be a benefit to everybody and they will update the system so that everybody benefits. Like it was already getting it. Yeah, it's not just to that one person, for that one person. So that is, you know, wonderful. If people want to learn more about chart buddies, where do they go? Or if they want to, you know, talk to you more about, you know, what it's about, where do they go? Chartbuddies.com. Chart buddies. Chart buddies, chart buddies. Yeah. Yeah, well, thank you, CC, for being on the show today. I'm very excited for Chart Buddies and EDI. I hope to see it launched according to the vision that you have for it. Yeah, well, thank you for having me. This has been fun. Of course. Again, you're welcome. So we've had Celie Tomatia Schwartz, president of Chart Buddies on this show today. Thank you again for being on here to talk more about the services and product. And we also want to thank ThinkTech, Kua'i, and J. Paidell for making shows like this possible. We had Mike and Hailey helping us out to have this show go on today. So thank you. And until next time, aloha. Bye.