Building and Scaling a Public Health Platform Under Extreme Time Pressure
Situation: Public Health Software in a Crisis Environment
Signetic was a startup focused on vaccination management software, spun out of Leapfrog Technology.
Originally built to support flu vaccination programs, the platform was rapidly repurposed during COVID-19 and became the system used by the City of Seattle and surrounding regions to operate large-scale mass vaccination events, including Lumen Field.
The operating environment was defined by:
- A global public health emergency
- Government and public health stakeholders with near-zero tolerance for failure
- Rapidly evolving policy and reporting requirements
- Intense public visibility and trust risk
This was not a typical startup context — product decisions directly affected public safety, equity, and public trust.
The Real Problem (Not the Obvious One)
The obvious problem appeared to be:
“How do we build software to schedule and manage vaccinations?”
The real problem was:
How do we create a platform that public health agencies can trust to operate reliably at scale, under uncertainty, while serving diverse and underserved populations?
Quality and clarity were the focus:
- Missed or duplicate appointments wasted scarce doses
- Confusing UX excluded elderly and non-technical users
- Reporting errors eroded confidence with state and federal agencies
Constraints That Defined the Work
Signetic operated under unusually severe constraints:
- Time pressure: Capabilities were delivered in days and weeks, not quarters
- Scale volatility: Traffic spiked unpredictably based on supply and eligibility changes
- Stakeholder complexity: Cities, counties, pharmacies, and public health districts
- Equity requirements: Access for elderly, homebound, and underserved communities
- Business uncertainty: Pandemic-driven demand followed by rapid market contraction
Every roadmap decision was shaped by these realities.
Key Leadership and Product Decisions
1. Position Signetic as a managed vaccination solution, not just software
Rather than selling a self-serve SaaS tool, Signetic was intentionally positioned as a managed vaccination platform:
- Software paired with operational support
- Clear accountability during live vaccination events
- Hands-on coordination with public health partners
This framing reduced adoption friction and increased trust with municipalities.
2. Prioritize operational reliability over feature expansion
Product decisions consistently favored:
- Stability over experimentation
- Simple, repeatable workflows over customization
- Proven operational flows over speculative features
This reduced risk during live events serving tens of thousands of people per day.
3. Design explicitly for real-world access and equity
UX and product choices accounted for:
- Low technical literacy
- Device and bandwidth constraints
- Language and accessibility needs
The goal was not elegance, but broad and fair access.
4. Continuously reassess the market as conditions changed
As vaccination demand declined:
- Addressable market assumptions were revisited
- Pharmacy and subscription-based models were tested
- Leadership confronted the limits of pandemic-era growth expectations
Not every expansion effort succeeded, but decisions were revisited quickly and transparently.
Outcomes & Signals
- Platform supported ~415,000 COVID vaccinations
- Enabled successful operation of large-scale public vaccination sites
- Earned sustained trust from public health agencies during peak crisis
- Demonstrated the ability to scale rapidly under extreme load
- Surfaced structural challenges in sustaining demand post-pandemic
Just as importantly, the experience clarified where software alone is insufficient without aligned incentives, readiness, and adoption.
What This Case Says About How I Lead
This case reflects how I approach product leadership:
- I remain calm and decisive in high-stakes environments
- I prioritize trust and reliability when consequences are real
- I design products around human constraints, not ideal users
- I adapt strategy honestly as markets shift
- I value accountability over optics, especially in crisis situations