The Story Behind PCIT Tracker: Our Origin Story

Like many good software ideas, PCIT Tracker didn't begin as a business plan.

It began with me trying to solve my own problem.

When I first started learning Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT) as a trainee in graduate school, I quickly realized how much information therapists are expected to keep track of throughout treatment. Every session involved coding caregiver skills, documenting child behaviors, reviewing homework, monitoring mastery criteria, updating progress graphs, and completing clinical documentation. On top of that, much of the same information had to be entered in multiple places. And, as a fifth year graduate student with internship applications, other clinical practicums, and my dissertation responsibilities, I had an incredibly hard time finding the time to manage all of the paperwork for my sessions.

I loved providing PCIT.

I didn't love all of the administrative work surrounding it.

Every therapist had a different system

As I learned from different supervisors and worked alongside other clinicians, I noticed that everyone had developed their own way of managing treatment data. I also found and even purchased an Excel spreadsheet that helped with graphing data after the fact, but still required me to make copies of data sheets and track data in-session by hand.

There wasn't one “right” system that streamlined the entire process. They required therapists to spend valuable time manually entering, calculating, or organizing data that already existed somewhere else. I kept thinking, “there has to be a better way”.

So I brought up my concern with my software engineer partner, and we started building.

I mentioned my frustrations to my software engineer partner, Drew. I wasn't asking him to build a business; I was just venting about how cumbersome PCIT paperwork could be. I wanted something that made my own sessions run more smoothly and made my life as a PCIT-loving graduate student easier. Before long, we found ourselves sketching ideas.

The earliest versions of what eventually became PCIT Tracker were surprisingly simple. We experimented with small workflow tools that automated pieces of my own process.

Slowly, one tool became several.

Several tools became one platform.

And somewhere along the way, this stopped being a personal project.

We built PCIT Tracker alongside the PCIT community

I will forever be grateful for the support I had from my clinical supervisor, PCIT trainer, and Director of Early Childhood Programs at Hopewell Health Centers. Their encouragement and excitement about this tool helped Drew and me get it up and running, and many of my colleagues provided valuable initial feedback.

One thing I'm especially proud of with the Tracker is that very few features began as brainstorming sessions between just Drew and myself. Most of our development and iterations to features in the platform have been sparked by user feedback and began with conversation.

One of our earliest users asked if we could track special time completion. Another mentioned that it would be nice to track WACB scores as well as ECBI. Yet another brought up the fact that many families they see have older children, so they asked for an adaptation for PCIT-OC. My trainer at Hopewell mentioned that it would be incredible to be able to track training requirements within the app. These conversations have shaped nearly every major feature we've added, and I am so appreciative of the relationships we have been able to make with so many of our users. In many ways, PCIT Tracker has become a collaborative project with the PCIT community.

Where we are today

Today, PCIT Tracker has grown into a platform that supports nearly every part of delivering and teaching PCIT. Clinicians can collect live coding data, monitor family progress through caregiver rating scales, automatically generate progress and outcome graphs, create customized homework sheets, and document treatment all in one place. Organizations can oversee clinicians and families through shared dashboards. And with the introduction of the Training Tracker, trainers can now manage the certification process (from quizzes and supervision to certification reports) without relying on spreadsheets, paper checklists, or scattered email threads.

We're just getting started.

Even though PCIT Tracker has grown tremendously since I first started training, our goal hasn't changed. We're still trying to solve the same problem that inspired the very first version: making it easier for clinicians to spend less time managing data and more time helping families.

Every conversation with a user teaches us something new.

Every piece of feedback helps shape what comes next.

And we're excited to keep building with and for the PCIT community for years to come.