Humm Systems Files IPO Prospectus: From Hospitality to Healthcare, Revolutionizing Patient Feedback with Psychology-Driven Technology

Humm Systems, founded in 2012 in Austin, Texas, primarily develops a mobile app for conducting surveys. Originally, Humm Systems’ clientele consisted mainly of around 200 customers from the food service and hospitality industries. However, in recent months, the company has unexpectedly acquired more than 80 new clients from the healthcare sector. While this growth is encouraging, the restaurant and hotel businesses are quite distinct from the healthcare industry. How did Humm Systems embark on this “cross-industry” expansion?

The story indeed began in a restaurant. A department chair at Yale University was deeply impressed by the Humm App while dining at an establishment that used it. Coincidentally, Yale-New Haven Health System, the university’s affiliated hospital network, was striving to advance toward “Patient-centered Care,” making the timely collection and analysis of patient feedback increasingly important. However, their traditional paper-based surveys had consistently yielded dismally low response rates of only a few percentage points. Consequently, Yale-New Haven Health System considered whether the Humm App could be adapted for the hospital setting to collect patient feedback in a novel way.

Subsequently, the story unfolded smoothly. In 2014, Humm Systems began collaborating with Yale New Haven Health System to design the Humm App specifically for hospital environments. Eight months later, Samsung tablets equipped with the Humm App were deployed across all 19 practice sites of Yale New Haven Health System. This innovation yielded favorable results. The success served as a compelling model, prompting many other healthcare institutions to seek similar patient feedback collection systems. As a result, Humm Systems acquired numerous new clients in the healthcare sector and successfully expanded its industry reach.

Humm Systems claims that traditional paper-based questionnaires typically achieve response rates of no more than 5%, whereas the Humm App has revolutionized the method of collecting user feedback, enabling response rates as high as 85%. Of course, what the Humm App offers goes far beyond simply transferring questionnaires from paper to tablets.

Humm Systems describes itself not merely as a technology company, but as a psychology-driven enterprise. The design and implementation of the Humm App are grounded in a series of psychological principles and rules. For instance, timely feedback must be obtained before customers depart, as most lose the motivation to provide any input once they have left. Additionally, a certain degree of anonymity is offered, since many people feel uncomfortable providing candid criticism. The placement of tablets equipped with the Humm App—whether in lounge areas, at payment counters, or elsewhere—is also determined by local conditions. In the specific case of the Yale New Haven Health System, Humm Systems customized several details: patients receive tablets with the Humm App upon admission rather than before discharge; questionnaires in the hospital setting are optimized to include 5–7 questions; and topics cover noise levels, cleanliness, and staff responsiveness. If issues raised in the survey require immediate attention, the Humm App can facilitate real-time resolution, thereby rapidly enhancing the user experience. For example, regarding cleanliness, the app features a button that allows users to summon cleaning staff with a single tap.

Before the new trend sparked by the Humm App, patient satisfaction surveys in U.S. healthcare institutions were typically handed to patients before discharge or mailed to their homes after they left the hospital. This outdated approach resulted in extremely low response rates, making the identification and resolution of issues highly inefficient. As Yale New Haven Health System put it, “We are simply adopting practices that are already mature and widely used in the restaurant and hospitality industries.” This statement seems to carry a deeper implication: It was not that we couldn’t do it before; we just hadn’t chosen to.

Yale New Haven Health System began prioritizing the collection and analysis of patient feedback to achieve “patient-centered healthcare.” This strategic shift is not unique to Yale New Haven Health; many other leading medical institutions are undergoing similar transformations. The fundamental driver behind this trend is the most significant change currently reshaping the U.S. healthcare system: the rise of “consumerism” in healthcare. Several factors are empowering individuals to take a more proactive role in selecting and determining their healthcare consumption, including rising medical costs (with an estimated average annual growth rate of 5.8% from 2014 to 2024), changes in health insurance coverage (such as the continued increase in enrollment in High-Deductible Health Plans, HDHPs), the emergence of new care models (such as the rapid expansion of Accountable Care Organizations, ACOs), and greater transparency of healthcare information (for instance, Yelp, the largest review platform in the United States, has been significantly improving and refining its reviews of healthcare providers). Consequently, the healthcare industry must learn from other consumer-facing sectors that prioritize customer experience. The story of Humm App exemplifies this trend.

Author: Minyue Luo, MBA from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College, currently engaged in healthcare consulting in the United States. Email: minyueluo@hotmail.com.