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Introducing Clinical QA as a Service: Are You Interested?

This newsletter contains an opportunity for clinicians & founders. Scroll to bottom highlight.

This newsletter also contains a new acronym drop for the tech nerds. Don’t say I’m not giving you attention.

Hello friends,

Weather gods have been generous this week shining plenty of sunshine, and I can finally THINK clearly again.

The sun is important.

Didn’t think I’d ever write that sentence in this newsletter.

I’m beginning to understand cats; they sprawl glamorously in a sunbeam and just lie there for hours.

Connecting cats to work software (our topic today) is almost impossible – so I’m leaving you with the imagery of Angela from The Office feeding her "office" cats as I attempt a cold open.

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Introducing CQAaaS – Clinical QA as a Service

You might have heard of SaaS, Software as a Service? SaaS was all the rage for a decade until the hype machine found AI.

I have a new acronym for the mental health–tech nerds: CQAaaS (see-kwass) (open to pronunciation ideas).

Clinical QA as a Service.

What is it? You’ll know in a minute.

What QA Engineering Actually Is

QA (Quality Assurance) engineering sits at the heart of how software is built.

Traditionally, a QA engineer tests software for various checks and parameters through out development cycle to ensure it meets design and performance standards.

They designs test cases, scenarios that check whether a product works as intended.

These include:

• Standard “normal use” cases
• Error-cases that presents what happens when the system encounters an error
• Edge-cases that stress-test the system

The QA engineer compares the intended experience with the coded experience and logs mis-workings (called bugs) for developers to fix.

That’s QA for you in a nutshell. It’s the discipline that keeps software reliable.

Why Mental Health Products Need Clinical QA

MH-AI products are a special category. The cost of discovering a failure point through a live user is often simply too high.

This is where clinicians come in. Clinical QA is where product teams and clinicians work together to:

• Uncover edge-cases a product team would never imagine
• Check whether responses are clinically appropriate
• Ensure the tool behaves safely under stress

Clinical QA ensures that a product meets clinical checks and balances, and there is an integral part of responsible MH-AI product development.

What Actually Happens in CQAaS

Before testing a product, you need to understand how it’s intended to work.

Usually someone from the product team, or the founder themselves, gives a demo of the product to the clinical team. The demo might include:

• The product’s objective, the intended therapeutic context, and an understanding of the target users
• A walkthrough of the features and their functionality

Then, clinicians get their own accounts and start exploring the product.

But there’s a the crucial step many teams miss.

The Secret Sauce To Clinical QA

I was a product manager at an Indian EdTech unicorn that at one point, was serving 100M+ users.

Even a small bug in the software could trigger a cascade of tickets (complaints) costing hours of customer success team’s time. The pressure was immense!

On my team were two seasoned QA engineers who taught us how to handle this.

Their mantra? Think ahead.

List all the ways this product could go wrong, and all the ways it could go right, well before-hand. Then start testing.

For MH-AI products, this means clinicians define stringent failure and success metrics upfront.

Founders will have internal success metrics, but we, the external Clinical QA team have two advantages:

• No blindness. We act as fresh set of eyes, free from any selective blindness that is a natural side-effect of spending too much time with the product.
• No bias. We set high standards for “green-lighting” the product and follow them without vested interest.

The secret sauce is setting the bar high before the product is even touched.

What Makes CQAaS Effective

Lets talk test-cases.

Even a simple feature like ‘scheduling a meeting’ can have 100+ test cases. While the number is high, it’s finite.

In Clinical QA for MH products, test cases can be infinite, because human responses are qualitative!

The best clinicians simulate the best and worst client scenarios they’ve encountered, pushing the product to answer for the hardest, most nuanced situations.

Naturally, one clinician can’t capture the full spectrum of human experience.

So the most effective Clinical QA setup is:

1. A group of clinicians, not just one or two
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2. Matched expertise eg. clinicians who work with adolescents test adolescent-focused products
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3. Clear guidance from someone who understands both product and clinical worlds (hint: that would be me!)

Since software iterates constantly, clinical QA is not a one-time task. Many founders hire full-time clinicians for this reason, but hiring a group for broad expertise is expensive and rare.

That’s why Clinical QA as a Service is economical for founders and solves the challenge of finding the right clinicians for product insight.

Are You Interested In Clinical QA?

I’m considering taking on Clinical QA projects.

When a product needs clinician review, I want to be able to open that up as an opportunity to the wider clinical community – everyone deserves a chance at an extra source of income.

I’m assembling a select group of experienced clinicians (across specialties and languages) to stress-test mental-health AI products.

Here’s what I offer:

1. I handle all the scoping, structure, and edge-case design
2. I prep clinicians who are new to QA
3. I guide the entire testing cycle wearing my product-manager hat
4. I bring the right clinicians to the right product

Historically, MH-AI founders have had to manually reach out to clinicians, or with great effort land partnerships with clinical orgs to get feedback on product.

I know this because I was one such founder.

Let this be a signal that times are changing.

For Clinicians

If this sounds interesting, or you’re curious but unsure if it fits your skillset — reply to this email.

Happy to answer questions about time commitment, process, or compensation.

For Founders

If you’re building an MH-AI product and need structured Clinical QA, reply to this email and I’ll follow up with next steps.

CQAaaS starts here.

P.S. In case you are neither a founder nor a clinician and are interested, email me anyway – tell me your story.

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Take care and see you next weekend,
Harshali
Founder, TinT

Connect with me, Harshali on LinkedIn​

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