← All ideas IDEA-101 6.9 us health-companion developed

Build the year-long pain diary that makes your surgeon say yes — without spending Sunday afternoons writing in a notebook.

Problem

Endometriosis patients face a 'prove it' gauntlet — surgeons demand months of documented pain before agreeing to laparoscopy, insurance gates coverage on the same evidence, and disability claims need work-impact data. Hand-kept paper diaries work but collapse during flares. Existing endo apps log daily but don't generate the 1-page surgeon-grade PDF that actually changes the appointment outcome.

Audience

US women 22-45 with diagnosed or suspected endometriosis (often 5-10 years into diagnostic odyssey), fighting for first laparoscopy / second-opinion surgery / disability accommodations / insurance approval — high emotional stakes, history of medical gaslighting

Reasoning

Source signals

SIG-20260426-us-health-companion-endo-court-ready-surgery-evidence: "the only reason I got my third laparoscopy [...] was able to show my (year long) pain diary"
SIG-20260426-us-health-companion-endo-postsurgical-recurrence-investigation: "Why Do I Still Hurt? [...] turn insight into action"

What we ship

**Core features (MVP)**

**Body-map quick log**: SVG body silhouette → tap location → severity 0-10 → optional 15s voice note → done. <30 seconds per entry.
**Cycle-aware overlay**: auto-imports cycle from Apple Health / Clue / manual; pain events auto-coded by cycle day.
**Medication trial log**: what taken, when, did it help (0-10) — but NO "switch to X" recommendation (RD / MD only).
**Work-impact tracker**: checkbox "missed work / left early / worked through pain" + optional note. Critical for disability claims.
**Surgeon-grade PDF (Pro)**: 1 click → 1-page PDF: 6-12 month timeline of pain events with body-map heatmap, cycle overlay, medication-failure log, work-impact summary. Brand-clean, readable.
**Investigation templates (Pro)** for post-op cohort: "4-week bladder-pain timeline", "8-week pelvic-floor trigger map" — structured log per suspected differential, output as specialist-specific PDF.
**Anti-features**: does NOT say "you have endometriosis / adenomyosis / adhesions" (diagnosis), does NOT suggest "switch medication", makes no medical claims.

**Primary user flow**

1. Signup, pick path: "fighting for first surgery / post-op / disability claim / insurance fight". UX adapts.

2. 30-second onboarding: cycle import (optional), preferred logging style (text / voice / minimal).

3. Daily use: 1-3 body-map taps per day. Pain hits → one-button log.

4. Monthly push "your surgeon-grade PDF is ready, review before next visit".

5. Free: 30 days history + basic body-map. Pro $11.99/mo or $89/yr: unlimited history, surgeon PDF, investigation templates, disability work-impact export.

**What it looks like**

**Landing**: "Stop the medical gaslighting." hero (community-native phrase), screenshot: 1-page surgeon PDF vs unstructured Notes.
**Main app screen**: SVG body-map — tap, add severity, done. Below: calendar view with pain-event heatmap.
**Surgeon PDF**: top — body-map heatmap; middle — 12-month timeline with cycle phase shading; bottom — top medications tried + outcome.

**MVP build plan (11 days)**

Day 1-3: Postgres schema (pain_events, locations, medications, work_impacts), FastAPI, Stripe.
Day 4-5: SVG body-map UI (anatomical regions, mobile-friendly tap zones).
Day 6-7: voice→structured-log Claude prompt, cycle overlay logic.
Day 8-9: PDF generator (heatmap rendering, cycle phase coloring), investigation templates.
Day 10: paywall, polish, audit copy for anti-diagnosis framing.
Day 11: landing, deploy, launch on r/endo / r/Endometriosis.

Reasoning

Dual pain from SIG-endo-court-ready (legitimate feature — year-long diary genuinely changes surgical-appointment outcomes per Endohope quote) + SIG-endo-postsurgical-recurrence (post-op cohort 1-3 years after excision, recurrence 20-30% — other endo apps treat post-surgery as "another daily log", missing the differential-investigation need). Endolog, Endomondo, Bearable, EndoLog cover daily logging, but none generate a ONE-PAGE surgeon-grade PDF + investigation templates as the core differentiator. Disability/insurance ammunition is an open lane (nobody offers explicit work-impact PDF). Regulatory-safe: log of patient's own events + cycle-correlation statistics, no diagnosis, no recommendations. Lesson from IDEA-047: NO AI "here's what you have" summary; AI is used ONLY for voice→structured-log conversion (user's own words), and the PDF is a formatted rendering of user-supplied data, not interpretation.

Quick competitive read

**Endolog / Endo Diary** — daily logging, basic PDF, no cycle overlay heatmap, no disability/insurance flow.
**Bearable** — general chronic-illness tracker, endo users complain it's too "general", no body-map.
**Phendo (Hera Health)** — research-grade, but research-first approach, UX overloaded.
**EndoMe** — community + tracking, lite logging, no surgeon PDF.
**Flo / Clue** — period-only, not endo-specific.
**White space**: high (only 1-2 direct competitors offer any surgeon-PDF analog, and it's weak). Score hint: competitive_pressure 7-8. Disability-claim PDF is essentially clean white space.

Initial pricing hypothesis

Free: 30 days history + basic body-map. Pro: $11.99/mo or $89/yr — unlimited history, surgeon-grade PDF, investigation templates, work-impact disability export, cycle import. WTP is high: one successful disability approval = $1.5K-2.5K/mo benefits, one approved laparoscopy = $5K-15K out-of-pocket savings. $89/yr pays back with a single successful consultation.

Distribution hypothesis

1) **r/endo + r/Endometriosis + r/AdenomyosisGroup** (250K+ combined) — solo-dev "Built this because my hand-kept diary got my third laparoscopy approved". Endohope quote as legitimate social proof.

2) **Endometriosis Foundation of America / Endometriosis Association** — partnership outreach: free Pro for verified members in exchange for newsletter mention.

3) **TikTok #endowarrior #endometriosis** — short demos "watch me build the PDF that got my surgery approved" — community responds to authenticity; tag is already viral.

Source signals (4)

SIG-20260426-us-health-companion-endo-court-ready-surgery-evidence:
SIG-endo-postsurgical-recurrence
SIG-endo-court-ready
SIG-20260426-us-health-companion-endo-postsurgical-recurrence-investigation:

Score breakdown

market_size	6/10
pain_severity	7/10
build_feasibility	6/10
speed_to_revenue	7/10
regulatory_safety	5/10
competitive_pressure	9/10
recurring_revenue_fit	8/10

MVP stack

frontend	Cloudflare Pages + React + Tailwind
backend	Railway + FastAPI + Postgres
ai	Claude Sonnet 4.6 ONLY for converting voice notes into structured pain entries (location tags from body-map, severity, what triggered)
payments	Stripe Subscriptions
storage	Postgres + R2 (PDF exports)
external_integrations	['Apple Health / Google Fit (cycle import, read-only)', 'Stripe']

Estimated build: 11 days

Regulatory

soft_block

Blocks: D-006

SaMD-creep risk (D-006 soft): AI converts voice notes into structured pain entries (location tags, severity, trigger). Body-map heatmap + cycle overlay + medication-failure log are renderings of user-supplied facts, not interpretation. Surgeon-grade PDF is the highest-risk surface — must be framed as "patient-supplied diary, formatted for clinical review", never "evidence of endometriosis" or "indicates surgery is needed". The PDF directly enters clinical/insurance/disability decision-making — strict no-diagnosis copy is non-negotiable. Investigation templates ("4-week bladder-pain timeline") must be neutral data-collection scaffolds, not differential-diagnosis suggestions. US regional advisory: HIPAA does NOT apply (direct B2C, no Covered Entity / no BAA). Reproductive health data has heightened sensitivity post-Dobbs (2022): WA MHMDA explicitly covers "reproductive or sexual health information" and applies to non-resident WA users + WA-located users. California requires reasonable security per CCPA + CMIA-adjacent CA Rosenthal Act considerations (CMIA itself does NOT apply to direct consumer apps without provider relationship). Consider geofence-blocking sale-of-data for users in states with abortion restrictions (TX, ID, MO, AL, LA, MS) as a defensive practice — even though IDEA does not target abortion, endo data overlaps with reproductive health flags. FTC Health Breach Notification Rule applies. Disability-claim PDF: ADA Title I (employment) framing — user-prepared evidence is acceptable; just must not falsely imply medical certification. BUILD RECOMMENDED with strict guardrails: (1) onboarding disclaimer "this is your structured diary — it does not diagnose endometriosis or recommend surgery; only your physician can"; (2) PDF footer "patient-supplied data, prepared by user, not a medical assessment"; (3) WA MHMDA-compliant consent + reproductive-health-data opt-in flag; (4) defensive geofence on data-sharing for users in abortion-restricted states; (5) anti-diagnosis copy audit before launch (no "your pattern indicates...", "consistent with adenomyosis", etc.); (6) data-export self-service tool (consumer rights under WA MHMDA / CCPA).

Competitors (0)

No competitors profiled yet.