Patient Discovery
Medical Tech
Improve the patient experience to increase patient completions and returns
Upgrade current user experience to address current flaws. Design a system that can bridge the communication gap, and set a new standard, between the patient and provider, Increase unique user sign-up completion, reduce onboarding drop-offs, reduce next steps confusion, increase user ongoing returns.
This project is the core focus for Patient Discovery. A way for providers to offer services to patients that need it, and for patients to open up about their day-to-day lives and personal lives. This information is crucial for providers as they can, most of the time, help patients from little not no cost.
The majority of patients don't want to speak about their personal lives to strangers. and most of the time when the providers talk to their patient about resources and services, patients automatically believe that these are all going to cost them money that they can't afford to spend.
Number 1: Providers want a lot of information from patients
When it came to building such a massive platform, we always went to content experts to help with content and details. But "The less is better" idea does not resound to medical trained professionals. They just want as much information presented to patients, and a lot.of information to be gathered.
Number 2: How much is too much
Our demographics was patients 50 and over. This puts already our platform at a disadvantage in comparison to millions out there. Most apps and websites are build for younger generations. So... how can I build a platform that can be used by elderly, not be too cluttered, and the content is perfect to prevent dropoffs.
Number 3: Long sign up forms
Providers want everything in the signup form to be used to gather and match patient to EHRs. This increases patient dropoff. Find a way to increase completions and still gather information to match users to the EHRs
Number 4: What should the users to next
Test and analyze patient dashboard to spot and reproduce a better patient hierarchy of events. Users should automatically understand what the next steps of the journey are.
Appointment Companion
The final goal was to design a structure that can handle patient input, images, data, changes, follow-ups, extras. This was going to be use by patient and provider during their appointments. And it has to work for web, mobile, and print.
Patients are the first to have in mind.
Even though provider are playing a huge part in content, development, and funding, this platform has to work for the end user, in this case the patient. If the user does not want to use the platform or there are too much drop-off all the content, development, and funding would have been for nothing.
All designs have to be done with an elderly person in mind. How would they react to this? Are they confused where they are? Are they confused what to do or what to do next? This questions are the driving factors of the design.
Current, users where taken, like most sites, to a long form that asked for details to complete and sign up.
A long sign up that's asks for personal information with out giving anything back to the patient
The biggest drop off point, asking elderly patient to verify emails. Going back and forth between sites and remmering credentials impacts drop-offs.
Taken a unique aproach is to have providers send invitation and most of the sign up
Invitation sent by a provider to patient email. This will link to Patient Discovery app
If the patient access this page from the email, the passcode will be prefilled, if not they will have to input the code manually from the email
Syncing to EHR, all the patient information is already gather. To confirm that the user signing up is the user syncing with the EHR, the user has to confirm date of birth and add a password for future logins.
Using the IA to study the onboarding and where the drop-offs are
Feedbacks and testing suggests that 71% of user drop-offs are happening 1/3 of the way through the onboarding.
Some feedback from users are:
"I don't know how long is going to take to complete"
"it feels too long"
"I don't have time for this"
Dividing the Onboarding
Since syncing to the EHR was possible, some of the data gathered in the onboarding was not necessary. Splitting the onboarding into demographics and appointment related questions helped improve patient retention and decrease patient drop offs since.
At first we belived that simplicity was going to win the day, tests proved us wrong. All these showed beside boring and unfinished, that there was no hierarchy, and that users didn't know what to do next.
Giving it a design treatment, separating them into sections and dividing content into what need to be done first second and third, help users be guided to fully completion, raising completion to 89 %
A guide leads the conversation between the patient and provider
The Guide is all patient reported, no changes. It's purposely divided into section to lead conversations and easy scalability.
First section, directly tells the provider how the patient has been feeling recently with any immediate concerns or questions
Second section, tells how the user is acting at their home. Can they do any normal activities on their own, or do they need help
Third section, tells about any goals of care that the patient prefers when dealing with their care, that could be to feel less pain, or have less side effects, or be treated at home
The Fourth section, tells about their day to day issues, concern, problems and more. Concerns that they might get assistance that they never thought that they could. Assistance is paying bills, housing, medical bills, transportation and more.
The Fifth section, is just a brief demographic. This ensures the provider who the patient is and also to see of any resources that this patient might get in accordance to their demographics.
Last section, is for notes that the provider might have leading the patient to resources, assistances, phone number and more.
After a few months of testing and research, sign-ups, completions, and returns increased as users began to use the new experience; shorten and straight to the point.
This iteration of the Discussion Guide was approved by investors and providers across the United States as more and more patients sign up for Patient Discovery.
