My Role
Product Designer - Project Scoping, Interaction Design,
Systems Design, Visual Design, Prototyping, Usability Testing
Team
Product Manager
Engineering Manager
Healthcare SME
Backend Developer
2 Frontend Developers
Timeline & Status
8 weeks
Overview
Innovaccer is a digital healthcare company that builds digital products for US Healthcare organizations. I worked with the patient care team, where I designed the MVP and various on going feature sets of their first patient-facing healthcare product.
Problem Statement
Patients feel unmotivated and struggle to follow strict medication schedules, leading to poor health outcomes.
Outcome
The launch of Medication Adherence feature was met with an outstanding sentiment from the organization’s clientele while helping increase the product Daily Active Users (DAU) by 37% and yielded goal completion rate of 82%.
Additionally, this feature also played a pivotal role in onboarding 3 new US$500,000+ clients for the product.
HIGHLIGHTS
A comprehensive solution for improving medication adherence to yield better health outcomes.
Setting Up Medication Reminder
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Medication Reminders
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Adherence Report
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DISCOVERY
Uncovering challenges and opportunities
Identified gaps in the US healthcare system
The US healthcare industry has made significant strides in providing high-quality care to the population. However, small gaps in the system still hinder its overall effectiveness.
Recognized inefficiencies in medication adherence
Through various discovery sessions with US healthcare organizations, patients and care takers, I and the Product Manager identified a significant gap: the lack of effective and efficient patient medication adherence.
Although many solutions to this problem already exist, they often fail to integrate seamlessly into the medical ecosystem. As a result, they fall short of achieving the potential positive impact on patients' lives.
Leveraging adherence solutions to boost platform USP
This problem aligned seamlessly with the organization's expansion plans for the patient-facing platform, and enhanced the overall unique selling proposition (USP) of the platform.
PROBLEM
Defining the problem
PROBLEM STATEMENT
Our patients struggle to follow medication schedules and feel unmotivated, leading to poor health outcomes.
So how do we improve these key metrics?
Increase in Medication Feature Adoption Rate
Significant Goal Completion Rate
Increase in DAU & MAU
RESEARCH
Unpacking patient perspective & adherence impact
Critical for chronic treatments and best health outcomes
By engaging with healthcare professionals and patients, I gained a comprehensive understanding of medication adherence's significance and key challenges.
Furthermore, sessions with healthcare providers helped me gain an understanding of the industry standards for adherence reports that they would use in their current practices.
These conversations overall highlighted the impact and provided insights into patient experiences with current practices.
Key Observations
Diagram
Estimated burden of billions per year on the healthcare
Drawing from numerous published journals and articles, I uncovered the stark reality:
"Patient nonadherence...is associated with poor therapeutic outcomes, progression of disease, and an estimated burden of billions per year in avoidable direct health care costs.” (Aurel O Iuga & Maura J McGuire, 2014)
It became clear that nonadherence wasn't just a patient issue; it was a systemic one, with profound financial and health implications.
Unaffordable & complex setup processes for current solutions
Next, I decided to look for alternate solutions available in the market and I found that the landscape of medication adherence tools is diverse, ranging from simple pill organizers and manual practices to high-tech medicine reminders and automated dispensers.
However, each solution came with its own set of challenges. I identified that the key challenges revolved around the following themes: affordability, complex setup and maintenance, lack of motivation, and a persistent disconnect between patients and healthcare providers.
These gaps in the existing solutions paved the way for our endeavor to design an effective, user-centered approach to medication adherence.
Insights gathered
Fear of the handwork
Patients and care takers often decide to use the simplest solutions such as alarms or ToDo lists to avoid complex manual setup processes.
Uninspired by the wind
Just hearing about the negative health effects of poor adherence is not always enough for a patient to enhance their medicine adherence.
Notification overload
Mobile phones are bombarded with countless notifications daily, often overwhelming users and reducing the effectiveness of crucial alerts. This constant influx can lead to notification fatigue.
Missing log of information
Healthcare staff and providers often miss the opportunity to help their patients according to their adherence habits and are going-off of the patient’s or care taker’s rough estimates.
VISION & GOAL
Defining the bull's eye
VISION & GOAL
We aim to improve medication adherence habits by simplifying schedule management and engaging users to keep them motivated.
Key principles to keep in mind
Unique medication reminders to stand out among daily notifications, directly addressing user engagement and adherence.
Simplifying the adherence process and introducing positive reinforcement encourages consistent medication management, making it more intuitive and less burdensome for users.
Facilitating easy sharing of adherence data with healthcare providers and family enhances understanding and support, fostering a collaborative approach to health management.
Bringing all the heads in the room
After gathering insights from the research, I presented my findings to the team and facilitated a collaborative brainstorming session. During this session, each team member contributed their unique perspectives and proposed solutions to address the key pain points identified.
DESIGN
Imagining “Medication Adherence v1.0”
v1.0 Medication Adherence
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Efficiency and Ease
Maximizing efficiency by incorporating only key information and pre-filling data, streamlining the setup of medication reminders to save time and reduce the workload.
Medication Visibility
Empowering users by prominently featuring their medications on the home screen and through timely notifications, encouraging proactive health management.
Simplicity and Depth of Adherence Reports
Adopting a design that's both simple for patients to understand and detailed enough for healthcare providers to analyze adherence trends and adjust treatment plans accordingly.
Error Mitigation
Minimizing health risks with error-handling checks on provider side, while also allowing patients to easily report incorrect medication information to their providers.
FEEDBACK
Hearing from the horse’s mouth
Harnessing client relationships to conduct usability testing sessions
By employing a thorough user recruitment process and maintaining close relationships with the organization's clients, I organized moderated user testing sessions with current and potential users that fit our personas. Additionally, I utilized Dovetail to record and share my observations with the team and stakeholders.
Discoverability of Medication section
Users struggled to locate the medication section in the app, making it difficult to add or manage reminders.
Significance of skipping a medication
Furthermore, I observed situations where skipping a medication was also important. For instance, providers would ask the patient to not take specific medications within 24 hours of a surgery.
Users might need additional contextual details
I also observed that users often mentioned additional details like directions on how to take the medication or any additional notes that the provider might have shared for them.
Medication offset recording
Users frequently reported taking medications outside the specified times. While patients didn't see this as significant, providers expressed great interest in using this information to improve treatment plans.
FINAL SOLUTION
When your mission seems closer
Improved discoverability
After extensive feedback and exploration, the Information Architecture (IA) of the app was modified to make it easier for patients to discover and access their medication section.
Additionally, providing a status card with encourage words & current performance of their medication adherence helped patients stay on track and motivated them to improve their adherence habits.
My meds section for overview
The Medications overview section provided users with a comprehensive view of all their medications, while subtle reminder nudges helped them identify areas for improvement and track their adherence.
Additionally, subheadings offered concise information about reminder occurrences, and a clear Floating Action Button (FAB) allowed users to easily add any missed or over-the-counter medications, becoming a user favorite.
Adherence reports
This feature provides a simple and clear performance indicator for patients to assess their overall and medication-specific adherence.
Additionally, the ability to export detailed reports enabled patients to share their adherence data with family, caregivers, or healthcare providers for quick feedback and improved care management.
Furthermore, patients could choose to feed back this information directly into their healthcare providers platforms, enhancing patient-provider care coordination.
Medication reminders
Reminders included all essential information such as notes (highlighted in the user feedback) and dosage, which were crucial for the user.
Additionally, when dealing with such crucial part of a user’s life, it was necessary to minimize risk and maximize the chances of success. Therefore, I implemented a flow where users would receive three reminders at 10-minute intervals, with no further reminders if they had already responded to one.
I also used a unique sound bite to make these reminders distinct and easily identifiable from other notifications patients might receive throughout the day.
Capturing critical information
The reminder system was structured to quickly capture all necessary information, addressing a major gap by incorporating time offsets.
These offsets could be viewed in the exported detailed report, allowing healthcare providers to create optimal treatment plans for the patient.
IMPACT & LEARNINGS
Notable learnings and business outcomes
Business impact
The introduction of the "Medication Adherence" feature received an exceptional response from the stakeholders and users.
It not only facilitated progress in key business metrics but also played a pivotal role in onboarding 3 new US$500,000+ clients for the product.
22%
Increase in System Usability Score
37%
Increase in avg. DAU over 4 months
82%
Goal Completion Rate
Preparing for the worst and empathetic trust building
Proactive Problem Solving
Anticipating and addressing potential issues, such as designing appropriate patient and provider-side flows for reporting incorrect medication information, taught me the importance of proactive problem-solving.
Building Trust with Stakeholders
Establishing trust with stakeholders requires dedicated effort. Rather than simply telling them about design decisions, showcasing relevant examples and data significantly aids in achieving alignment and fostering trust.
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