New App Connects LGBTQ Patients With Inclusive Doctors

Three medical students from the University of Pennsylvania are gearing up to release their new app, SpectrumScores, by the end of August. It will connect lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender patients with doctors who are recognized as gay-friendly by advocacy organizations, medical centers and eventually, by app users feedback.

NBC News reports that Naveen Jain, Jun Jeon and Phil Williams met each other while brainstorming ideas for their university's PennHealthX competition, where student entrepreneurs develop health care-focused concepts.

At first, they considered focusing on blood pressure and acne, but then they changed course, with Williams telling NBC, "We all had a collective realization that [those ideas] weren't really reflective of what we were actually passionate about."

This is unusual, as the PennHealthX Program usually has a medical student teamed up with a business student and an engineering student. But Williams explained that they "decided that we were going to try and go a bit rogue from the competition -- form a group just made up of medical students and find the expertise to move forward along the way."

They did get help on the technology and business end of things, with Jeon saying, "Fortunately for us, my brother actually has really extensive coding experience, and he has agreed to help me in good faith. He's actually in charge of developing the back end... and we've actually outsourced a graphic designer -- my brother's friend -- to design all the relevant graphics that are displayed on the front end."

Jain, Jeon, and Williams hope their app will serve an important need for the community. LGBTQ people, especially people of color, are more likely to experience discrimination when trying to access health care, according to a study by the National Institutes of Health.

In the current iteration of the app, users identity-related information will be displayed next to a chosen username when writing reviews of physicians, to help other users determine how personally helpful another's user's review may be. The information shown will include location, sexual orientation, and gender identity, but not their racial or ethnic identity.

"Everything here is voluntary. You can remain anonymous when you write a review," Jeon said. "We have not put anything to indicate their race yet, but [with] later user feedback, if that would prove helpful for the physicians and the user community, then we could put that on there as well."

The SpectrumScores team plans on focusing on select cities for the app's initial release -- such as Philadelphia, New York City and Chicago -- but they eventually plan to expand the app's reach across the U.S.