Doctor.e Patient Portal
Compressing time and distance to deliver high
quality clinical outcomes to improve patient care
Doctor.e is a global healthcare diagnostics company that provides intellect-enabled diagnostic care to the populace through clinical competence and a proprietary network technology.
My Role
They approached me to help them with product building exercise and work with them to make the Doctor.e Patient Portal and Information System. For this, I was involved in the primary and secondary research. Some of the research was already in progress when I took this project.
Research
After conducting a thorough investigation of existing data, (collected via studies, published papers and ethnographic research) we collectively decided that we wanted to explore the implementation of healthcare practices, diagnostics in particular. Practitioners, Physicians and Surgeons with reasonable competence exist in the mid segment of this spectrum. They are locally and culturally oriented with the community and enjoy their trust. However, the efficiency suffers since they do not have access to good quality diagnostics
The Problem
The Business Model: Doctor.e uses a proprietary software system to deliver services and clinical opinions as a “Pay Per Use” service. As explained earlier, 10-100 bedded healthcare facilities usually cannot afford to establish highly efficient and quality based in-house diagnostics centres due to lack of Financial, Intellect and Manpower resources.
Doctor.e will provide its service as a B2B model under a Franchisee Model.
Task Flows
Patient-facing applications can be uniquely difficult to design and develop as a result of the added complexity of a geographically wide and diverse user base. It’s because of this I thought of creating low fidelity wireframes and user flows for patient groups
Interface Design
Keeping the target audience and subject in mind, I came up with a very simple design language. I have explored the fundamentals of color theory and color scheme, then examined the emotional effects of certain colors. All blues/aqua blues are universally relaxing and safe, the lighter shades will seem more comforting while the darker one will seem serious and bold.
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We arranged to have group interviews with path lab owners, private doctors, hospitals, experts like Pathologists, Radiologists
These research processes were conducted in multiple cities on India including - New Delhi, Lucknow, Nagpur, Mumbai etc.
Synthesizing and Uncovering the Research Insights
A comprehensive combination of Diagnostic Expertise, Equipment and Software, more specifically the wisdom to use appropriate matrix in different social–economic environments to achieve viable, quality and reliable clinical outcomes is the only rational solution.
Key Insights
Possible Areas of Interventions
Large Health Facilities: The diagnostic facility is located in-house in traditionally large Government or Private tertiary care facilities. It comprises of large equipments that are networked with a local Lab Information System which is in further sync with the Hospital Management System. A wide range of highly experienced medical doctors present at the location, add value to the data generated by the equipment. In addition their collective opinion is one of the strong driving forces in clinical decision thereby making diagnostics one of the stronger pillars in positioning the medical institute.
Hub and Spoke Private Diagnostic Chains: In this segment, one large central processing facility uses a network of small collection centres to physically collect and transport samples. It works on the principle of using high throughout equipment’s similar to Segment 1 to achieve similar results. While this makes economic sense to the private chain at the cost of the patient. The time loss in transporting samples over hundreds of kilometers leads to deterioration of sample quality throwing out clinically irrelevant results.
Independent Laboratories and Diagnostic Centres: Stand alone labs and diagnostic centres are usually owned and operated by a pathologist or radiologist or entrepreneurs promoted by clinicians. Local consulting physicians and clinicians in the immediate community normally refer patients to them. While this is the ideal model, this model is not scalable.
Key Issues
Overall, the opportunity lies in providing these services through 10 to 100 bedded healthcare facilities. It is in these healthcare facilities that the medical practitioners have a captive patient load but :
The Objective
To create a design solution which can help a patient manage their blood reports and all of their medical history, reports, prescriptions all at one place. The application must enable the patient to view his/her sample journey and enable them to share their reports overseas or to any other doctor. Ultimately, the biggest patient software challenge is to include the right feature set that will encourage patients to use the application regularly and, ultimately, convince reticent healthcare institutions to engage in the patient software process.
Interview Objectives
Understand user goals and pain points
Understand where user priorities are
Build information architecture
Envision visual language
Personas
Based on our research and interviews, the following personas came forward: the busy corporate/ businessman and the cost saving housewife. Below are abbreviated versions of the personas.
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