Background

MDLand is a digital healthcare company that has been providing solutions to healthcare problems since 1999. Its main focus has been on a cloud-based EHR platform, but it also has a couple of patient-facing products. However, these products are not integrated and lack user-friendliness, resulting in lower-than-expected usage and a slow growth rate.  Meanwhile, there is a growing need for patients wanting to manage their health online. As a result, we initiated this project to improve and integrate products to provide users with a seamless health management experience.

Challenges

Introducing changes or new products to healthcare providers is challenging due to the industry's nature.  As we aim to cater to the needs of both patients and healthcare providers and rely on providers to promote our patient-facing products, we must strike a balance. 

The company’s existing patient-facing products were developed in a short time frame upon request, resulting in a lack of qualitative and quantitative data for user research.

Research and Define

| Research

-  Product offering analysis

- Data Analytics 

- Customer and User Reviews

- User Interviews 

To gain a comprehensive understanding of our products, I conducted an in-depth analysis. We established Google Analytics and Graylog dashboards to grasp user demographics and popular features. I also studied user reviews, feedback, and collaborated with our customer success team and practice coaches to delve into user experiences.

I engaged in 7 user interviews with patients, digging into their perspectives. Additionally, I interviewed 6 clinic receptionists and doctors to gain valuable insights from the provider side. These interviews led to the creation of 4 personas, enabling the team to align design efforts toward a shared goal.

 The user journey map visually depicts the entire process of a patient's visit to the doctor. By doing so we identified significant gaps in the pre-visit and check-in stages, where patients ten do experience heightened anxiety due to the inherent unpredictability.

| Define 

To balance the business needs and needs of both patients and providers and to avoid directing too much of our time and attention to developing only one side, I created a Venn diagram to depict expectations and needs, as well as to find the priorities for our project.

| Design

The analysis led us to the decision of prioritizing the improvement of two products: the iClinicHealth app and the Patient Engagement tool and their integration with our EMR system. 

Bridging the gap between products 

1. User Profile

2. Appointment Time

3. Notification Organization

New Feature

1. Virtual check-in and waiting room for Patients:

Patients are relieved from the burden of filling out redundant information since we can pre-fill the available data, requiring them only to verify and make necessary updates that will be applied across all clinics.  Clinic staff's efficiency is also enhanced with this streamlined process as they no longer need to manually log the data from paper forms into the EHR.

Moreover, the waiting room feature enables clinics to provide estimates for clinic wait times and initiates the queue with patients' responses. Getting updates from patients addresses concerns about no-shows and simultaneously eliminates the need for patients to spend hours waiting in the physical waiting room.

2. Automated campaign and tools for Providers:  

Through the utilization of the automated campaign tool, clinic staff can liberate themselves from the arduous tasks of making individual phone calls and manually jotting down notes for every appointment. This tool empowers them to: automatically send appointment reminders to increase show-up and easily send targeted messages tailored to specific patient groups, thereby fostering a sense of personalized healthcare for patients.

Existing feature overhaul 

For the iClinicHealth app and Patient Engagement. There are lots of features where the process is cumbersome and contains an excessive number of irrelevant steps.  Here are a few examples of the overhaul:

The onboarding process comprises 8 steps that users must complete before they can begin exploring the app. In addition, the registration and appointment booking components are combined within a single step, which significantly lengthens the onboarding process.

Streamlined registration by creating tailored steps for different users, enabling quick and efficient registration, and appointment booking has been separated as a distinct process.

To enhance the appointment booking experience, we automatically prioritize their Primary Care Provider (PCP) and the doctors they have visited the most. Additionally, filters are available to empower users to conduct a more precise search.

The current inbox layout resembles an email-style format; however, individual messages are not interconnected. This results in a cluttered inbox where all messages are mixed together, making it challenging to navigate and view them effectively.

Restructured the inbox into a dialog view, incorporating tags to distinguish various message types and emphasizing the ones that require attention. The ease of replying to messages is also enhanced because the dialog view created a more personalized conversation experience compared to the old system alert approach.

A separate Notification entrance added for sysem updates.

Design and Functionality Alignment

1. Feature parity:  Although our iClinicHealth app and patient portal offer similar features, they have distinct designs and user flows.  Elderly patients who have no cellular data still prefer the web version. Thus as a phase 2 project, we started implementing the web version of the app, to replace the patient portal and unify the experience for patients.

2. Accessibility: To make our patient-facing app more accessible, I added readability customization and asked the team to make the app compatible with commonly used assistive technologies like screen readers or voice recognition software. Responsive versions were made for all designs.

3. Rebranding and Design system:  As the app had been originally designed by developers prior to my involvement, there was a lack of a cohesive design system. To address this, I developed a design system with the goal of minimizing inconsistencies across platforms, enhancing visual hierarchy, and improving system feedback for user interactions.

Result

The redesign creates a smoother and more integrated patient journey. Resulted in significant positive outcomes for both patients and providers. Ultimately, it has assisted the company in achieving its business goal of attracting more providers to utilize our EMR system.

iClinicHealth App: Both user acquisition and retention rates increased significantly by 40%.  Appointment booking and virtual check-in and lab are the top 3 used features. The onboarding error rate decreased by 38%.

Patient engagement tool: 50+ clinics adopted the new process of automating appointment reminders and survey activities, with a patient response rate of 70%.

By giving prominence to the user feedback section, we successfully encouraged more direct user input. This, in conjunction with our established analytics platforms, enables us to continuously iterate and update the app based on user insights!