Patient Access
This tool, which started life as a portal that joined upwards of 12 disparate solutions into one user interface, has grown to include AI, chatbots and a slew of other emerging technologies and integrations. It has enabled a number of hospital networks to increase access to affordable medicine and provide more anticipatory care.
At right is a reel my team developed to showcase the sketching , wireframing and prototyping that was performed as part of its design.
The challenge
the challenge
A large retail pharmaceutical company with an established e-commerce platform had to re-evaluate their digital strategy and presence in light of competition from digital-first competitors.
The real challenge was, how do you grow revenue, while also serving the company’s stated mission to reduce healthcare costs for patients?
What we discovered
The organization’s initial hypothesis was that by simply interjecting themselves between the patient and their doctor they could recommend a more cost effective treatment. It seemed logical, plenty of data suggests that cost is a major concern and barrier to adherence. What they did not anticipate is that patients do not see themselves as possessing any power in this scenario and are reluctant to take on the role of decision maker when it comes to their treatments, especially in the case of the chronically ill, the proposed target demographic for the MVP. What we created instead, was a tool that increased the patient’s access to knowledge and built a platform that enabled more productive conversations between patients and providers. On the provider side, we were able to introduce features that allowed them to consider price when devising a treatment.
The Results
Product mix increased by 3%, doubling the goal.
Physician adoption increased from 14% to 27% over three releases.
Reports found that networks participating in the program reduced patient prescription costs by 5%, while the average cost of recurring prescriptions (the main target of the solution) fell 8%.
How we did it
-
Recruit
An often neglected art within design is recruitment. Given the number of actors (patients, pharmacists, providers and payers) who would all need to interact with this tool, we had to throw just about every form of recruitment methodology at this engagement. Our effort ranged from recruiting through existing marketing and sales channels for pharmacists, to outside agencies for patients. The key to any quality recruitment is the screening process. We designed our questionnaire to target a range of personas and demographic indicators.
-
Immerse
One of my favorite parts of the job began next. With participants identified we went into the field. I leverage methods from a variety of ethnographic disciplines from Contextual Interviews to diary studies.
-
Ideate
Ideation may resemble brainstorming, but it’s much more. Coming out of Immerse we identified key human centered concepts (Values, Friction Points, Design Principles etc) which inform the specific changes in behavior we want to impact as well as how we would go about measuring them. It is at this point that we determine not only what solutions we might suggest, but the metrics reflected in the results above.
-
Sell it.
Having selected a number of solutions to move into a prototyping phase, we set to documenting the specific chain of interactions and dependencies that would be required to develop a successful solution. This allowed us to surface any assumptions we were making about how the solution would work and inform the prototyping that would follow. It is also invaluable for managing the development portfolio so as to allow for the perfect balance of minimum and viable product.