Curio Wellness launches a new app to help patients personalize medical cannabis

Baltimore-founded Curio Wellness’s mobile app offers patients a guide to its products while allowing for orders to be placed at dispensaries across Maryland. The app was designed by Severna Park, Maryland-based company Accella, whose expertise and portfolio (including cannabis businesses) sufficiently convinced Curio Wellness that it could deliver the minimum viable product that the Maryland-based company sought.

“The basic content that you need in there relative to your brand goals but also the stickiness of why somebody is going to keep using and going back to this app is what contributed to picking [Accela],” Curio Wellness’s chief brand officer and public policy director Wendy Bronfein explained to Technical.ly.

Some of the key features noted in a public announcement include:

• A product explorer, in which patients can search for products based on the type of relief desired — from anxiety to chronic pain and beyond.
• myCurio: A digital journaling tool that allows patients to chronicle their experience with each product.
• A “medical cannabis 101”-type introduction to the endocannabinoid system and how cannabis works in the body, as well as how it can address certain symptoms.
• A store locator that maps and lists all dispensaries that carry Curio Wellness-produced and -distributed products.
• An in-app “ask an expert” feature to communicate with someone from the Curio Wellness team about its cannabis products.

Curio Wellness is looking to hire a project manager to take ownership of the app’s development as the company seeks to increase functionality over time. The app is geofenced so it only works in Maryland, where medical cannabis is legalized and Curio Wellness principally operates.

“We know that relief cannot stem from a one-size-fits-all approach, which is why we developed a digital tool that gives patients a personalized experience,” Bronfein said in a statement.

Going into the cannabis store can feel like looking at a Cheesecake Factory menu, according to Bronfein, with an overwhelming abundance of choices. The app aims to reduce some of that decision paralysis before patients set foot in a dispensary.

“You can come in with a better sense of what’s the right fit for you,” Bronfein said, adding that you can “then be able to catalog for yourself how well it worked.”