Quick access to international specialists and staff that truly care
Click on the image to see the Figma Prototype
#RemoteHealthcareAccess
How might we make healthcare more accessible in a remote world?
OVERVIEW
After we got presented with the topic for the Hackathon, I saw the opportunity to explore a solution to a problem that I felt passionate about. I was inspired from a real and recent story of a British woman, Janice Johnston, who was wrongly diagnosed with a rare type of blood cancer (PV) in 2017. She had 18 months of chemotherapy experiencing terrible side effects and she was told that she would need chemotherapy for life. Later she discovered that she had a different condition. Sadly she isn't the first person that goes through a similar nightmare and misdiagnosis it's a serious issue globally. Therefore allowing patients to get easy access to a second opinion was the primary goal for this project.
PROBLEM
In a study that the Mayo Clinic ran and published the findings in 2017 as well, they reported that 88% of people that contact them for a second opinion or diagnosis confirmation for a complex condition go home with a new or refined diagnosis.
"Each year in the U.S., over 12 million adults who seek outpatient medical care receive a misdiagnosis"
My role: Project Manager, UX/UI Designer (UX research, UX writer Visual Designer, Prototyper)
Team: 3 UX/UI Designers, 3 software engineers
UX Design Tools: Figma, Google Docs, WhatsApp, Canva, Miro
Software Engineering Tools:
• Front end: React.js, HTML. CSS and Bootstrap
• Back end: Django, Python
• Database: PostgreSQL
• Database: PostgreSQL
• Other: Git, GitHub
The Challenge: Create a real and functional product by having a successful cross-team collaboration during a 3 days design sprint.
Topic: Healthcare Access in a Remote World
Judging panel:
• A director of Intensive Care
• A Senior Product Designer
• A Software Engineer
• An Experience Researcher
Methodology: User Interviews, Persona, Journey Mapping, Competitive and Comparative Analysis, Prototyping
OUR SOLUTION
An experience that will allow patients to receive a confidential second opinion by having access to specialists all around the world, and not only in the U.S. When people are sick, they look to their doctor to find solutions but they don’t always have correct answers or diagnoses due to the complexities of symptoms and conditions. Through 2nd Opinion patients can get quicker or in some cases immediate assistance and access to lifesaving treatment or avoiding unnecessary treatments. A second opinion may also reduce stress amongst a patients family when they learn the new diagnosis does not carry genetic implications.
Discover & Define
With all of this in mind we started our design process and gathered important data after performing research with a patient that was misdiagnosed during her pregnancy. Aside from the insights bellow, the patient we interviewed also mentioned experiencing poor bedside manner before and after she got misdiagnosed which made the whole experience traumatic and unpleasant.
Our research insights:
• The patient got a wrong diagnose and she thinks the doctor could have potentially put her life at risk.
• The patient couldn't get a referral or have easy access to a second opinion from a specialist.
We defined the patient's problem and we created a journey map to understand what the patient goes through when they get a misdiagnose and our persona, Ana Smith. Ana got diagnosed with a rare type of breast cancer. She feels shocked and doubts the results because she has always been healthy and there isn't any cancer history in her family. She did some research online and tried to get a referral to see a specialist but her health insurance limits access outside their network.
Our goal
An experience that will allow patients to:
• Share their medical history in an intuitive and easy way.
• Receive a confidential and a more reliable second opinion by having access to specialists all around the world not only in the U.S.
• Get quicker or in some cases immediate assistance and access to lifesaving treatment or stopping unnecessary treatments
• Design with empathy
Design
Once we defined the project objectives, we had to discuss the feature prioritization with the software engineer team. The UX/UI team decided to do a design studio to be able to explore different ideas. Once each of us (The UX Designers) had some sketches, we presented them to the whole team. We brainstormed, critiqued and picked the feature we were gonna focus on that would allow the software engineers to build everything within a short amount of time.
During this stage we struggled the most. One design was focused on the signing in/sign up functionalities mainly, another design had too much complexity and features that will take way too long to build and the third design was straight forward to the uploading of documents feature which was great for practical purposes but acted more as a native app. We decided that we should keep the project as straight forward as possible and it was up to the UX Design team to make the final decision that would work for both teams.
After multiple discussions and for the purposes of this project we decided to go for a responsive web design using the “mobile-first” principle that combined an informative landing page with details about our company services and testimonials, an easy and intuitive sign up/sing in step, the upload of the patient's medical history to our system and the specialists selection. For the visual design of the Hi-fi prototype I decided to go for a warm color palette mixed with appropriate imagery to make patients feel immediately welcomed. The main priority on the landing page was to show that our staff truly cares about them and want to make the whole experience as easy as possible and not stressful. I selected easy to read fonts (Fjalla One and Open Sans) for accessibility and I designed a logo specifically for the project. I also served as a UX writer and wrote the content for the prototype. All of this to enhance the usability and improve the user experience.
Deliver
Click on this video to watch a prototype walk-through
Outcomes & Lessons Learned
This was the first time I worked with a team of people that I didn't know at all and the first time I worked with software engineers so I was very excited to learn from this hackathon experience. I was prepared to present my idea for this project but it was very important for me to listen to what everyone else had in mind to be able to understand how we were going to collaborate. I didn't know much about the healthcare industry beforehand so this project allowed me to dig deeper and learn about some of the current issues that have a serious impact into people's lives.
After I read that article on the news I was truly shocked and couldn't believe people go through situations like that so I felt very passionate about this topic and wanted to find a possible solution for it. I was able to transmit this to the rest of the team so everyone got very excited and ready for the challenge. This passion and being empathetic with each other helped us to work out our differences and get together to deliver this product.
Having clear objectives and effective communication were key for the success of this project. We managed to deliver a complete product that was pleasant for the patients but also fully functional (front end and back end). We won 1st place and we are considering exploring the "2nd Opinion" experience even further.