Background

When I joined, our patient education platform was made up of specialized video content delivered in the waiting room via tv, and in the exam room via an interactive kiosk. The platform was provided free to health practices supported by advertising. As such the business was focused on getting the maximum number of screens to market.

Problem

After spending nearly a decade focused solely on video content delivered via waiting room tv the company experimented with offering a kiosk in the exam room. While the kiosk was moderately successful, the company was focused purely on the number of screens and engineering was focused on creating more products to drive that screen count. No one was focused on the overall quality of the experience for the patient, nor how it all tied together.

Solution

I identified the need to look holistically across the patient customer experience as well as the health care professional's interaction with our increasingly varied product portfolio to both map out our current ecosystem and identify gaps we could address with new product and service offerings. I started to explore the tolls and methods of service design as way to tell this story to engineering and business leaders at the company.

This patient experience map represented the first time we could see a comprehensive view of all the touchpoints with our offerings:

The map came out of initial research including observation in doctors' offices, interviews with patients, staff, and physicians and became a tool for helping us prioritize new feature and product work. In addition it helped focus the team on patient and physician painpoints as well as helping us identify new product opportunities. I used this map as a tool to shift the thinking around a new product in the early stages of engineering. The original kiosk was not seeing similar levels of engagement as the waiting room tv so the business had the engineering team explore a larger scale interactive tv for the exam room. Utilizing the research and an early version of this patient experience map I was able to influence the development of the next generation wallboard product.

 

The wallboard experience in the exam room was driven by two principles from the earlier research: 1. Provide value for the physician, not just the patient. For the product to be more successful than the kiosk we needed it to be useful to them as well. 2. Provide a high impact, passive education opportunity that their phone can't give them. The wallboard delivers on these principles by displaying large format digital health education posters to the patient and morphing into consultative tool for the physician as well.

While not only delivering new found value to physicians (and patients and sponsors) the wallboard was a 2016 Chicago Innovation Award winner:

You can also see a doctor's testimonial about the wallboard as well as try out a simplified demo:

Wallboard Demo   Doctor Testimonial