MyHealth - A patient health information portal
Today's empowered patients seek to actively participate in their healthcare journey, wanting access to personalized, relevant, and easily understandable health information. MyHealth aims to reimagine the health learning experience for patients undergoing procedures such as knee replacement surgery.
Problem statement
Imagine you just learned you will need a knee replacement surgery. The overwhelming nature of navigating the healthcare system becomes apparent as you seek information about the procedure, recovery, and long-term care. You find yourself sifting through generic information on Google, unsure of what specifically applies to your situation.
Today's empowered patients desire more than just basic information; they want to actively participate in their healthcare journey.
However,
The siloed structure and lack of personalized information hinder patients' ability to engage as true partners in their care. It often takes years of experience to adequately navigate the healthcare system.
This gap creates a barrier between patients and the tailored, relevant information they need to feel confident and informed about their health decisions.
Goal
How might we
…empower patients to engage as active participants in their healthcare journey by providing them access to personalized health information?
The goal is to reimagine the health learning experience for patients undergoing procedures such as knee replacement surgery. Instead of relying on generic information from Google, we aim to offer a personalized health portal where patients can access detailed, relevant information about their specific health journey.
By centralizing and customizing this information within a health portal, we aim to empower patients with the knowledge they need to make informed decisions, reduce anxiety, and actively engage in their own care, ultimately improving their overall healthcare experience.
Solution: MyHealth
We developed a patient health information portal; MyHealth. Recognizing the need for personalized and accessible health information, MyHealth aims to empower patients by providing tailored, comprehensive insights into their specific health conditions and treatments.
Instead of resorting to generic information sources like Google, MyHealth aims to provide a tailored and comprehensive health portal. This portal will deliver specific, personalized information, enabling patients to understand what to expect, prepare adequately, and manage their health effectively before, during, and after their surgery. By doing so, we aim to foster a sense of empowerment, improve patient engagement, and enhance overall health outcomes.
Key features of MyHealth:
Personalized Health Information: MyHealth offers customized health content tailored to individual patient needs. Patients can access specific information related to their condition, such as knee replacement surgery, including pre-surgery preparation, detailed surgical process explanations, post-operative care instructions, medication management, and potential side effects.
Integrated Health Journey: MyHealth seamlessly integrates into the existing Dovetale patient portal, enhancing its capabilities to deliver a cohesive health journey experience. From diagnosis to recovery, patients can track their progress, access relevant educational materials, and stay informed about their treatment plan.
Interactive Learning Modules: To foster deeper understanding and engagement, MyHealth includes interactive learning modules that guide patients through their healthcare journey. These modules are designed to answer common questions, clarify procedures, and provide step-by-step instructions for managing their health.
Outcome: patient feedback
Sahar A.
Patient
This is the aftercare summary I would love. Especially the key terminology - I think that’s brilliant.
Debra M.
Patient
Navigating the hospital can be a maze when you are nervous for an appointment. The interactive AR wayfinder I think is a lifesaver during hospital visit. It reduces patient anxiety and help feel more in control.
Michael S.
Caregiver
The detailed doctor's notes and medication calendar are incredibly useful for my post-surgery care.
Design process
Discovering the problem space
Understanding the patient-Canadian healthcare experience
When we embarked on this project, we didn't have a clear problem to solve. To uncover the key issues patients face within the Canadian healthcare system, we started with a broad exploration of various aspects of patient care using a bubble diagram. This visual tool helped us branch out and identify multiple potential areas of concern related to patient experiences in healthcare.
To gain deeper insights, we conducted preliminary interviews with seven Patient and Family Advisors (PFAs) and patients. We listened to their stories and experiences, using empathy maps to analyze and understand the emotions, needs, and pain points they expressed.
Initial findings
Through these interviews, we discovered several commonalities in the patients' experiences:
Urgent Care vs. Emergency: Patients often felt uncertain about whether to visit Urgent Care or the Emergency Department based on their conditions. This confusion was a significant issue, and nurses also reported frequently encountering patients who were unsure about which service to use.
Navigating the Healthcare System as New Immigrants: New immigrants found it particularly challenging to navigate the Canadian healthcare system. They struggled with understanding how to access care, what services were available to them, and the processes involved in seeking medical attention.
Lack of Access to Health Information: Patients reported a lack of access to tools and resources that could help them understand more about their health, especially after a hospital visit. They felt uninformed about their conditions, treatment plans, and follow-up care, which led to anxiety and uncertainty about their health outcomes.
These findings highlighted critical gaps in the patient experience, particularly in terms of accessing timely and relevant health information and navigating the healthcare system effectively. This understanding shaped our approach to designing a solution that would address these pain points and empower patients to engage more actively in their healthcare journey.
Building on initial discovery: exploration of concepts
After identifying the high-level challenges from our initial discovery, we moved into the concept exploration phase. We conducted concept-testing interviews with patients and healthcare professionals to help us choose the most impactful direction. Through this process, we tested several potential solutions addressing different aspects of patient care, ultimately focusing on three primary concepts.
Concept 1: Simplifying navigation within the Healthcare System
This concept aimed to provide a streamlined guide to help patients decide whether to go to Urgent Care or the Emergency Department based on their symptoms. While this addressed an immediate need, feedback from stakeholders indicated that this solution, though useful, would not have a broad or lasting impact on overall patient engagement and education.
Concept 2: Assisting new Immigrants with Healthcare System navigation
This concept focused on creating resources and tools to help new immigrants understand and navigate the Canadian healthcare system. While important, the target audience for this concept was relatively narrow, and the resources required to develop this solution were significant compared to the number of people it would initially benefit.
Concept 3: Solving the challenge of lack of access to Health information
The third concept aimed to empower patients by providing them with personalized health information through an extended capability within Dovetale, St. Joseph Healthcare Hamilton's existing patient portal. This concept addressed a widespread issue affecting a large patient population, offering a significant opportunity to enhance patient engagement and education.
The opportunity & why we chose Concept 3:
The opportunity:
Widespread Impact: Concept 3 addressed a universal challenge that almost all patients face – the need for accessible and personalized health information. By tackling this issue, we could positively impact a broader patient base.
Empowerment through Information: Patients and healthcare providers emphasized the importance of patients being well-informed about their health conditions, treatment plans, and follow-up care. This concept aligned with the growing trend of patient empowerment and self-management.
Enhancing Existing Infrastructure: By building on the existing Dovetale patient portal, we could leverage an already familiar platform, making it easier to integrate and adopt new features. This approach also allowed us to capitalize on the existing user base and infrastructure, ensuring a smoother implementation process.
Reducing Anxiety and Improving Outcomes: Providing patients with the right information at the right time helps reduce anxiety and improves health outcomes. This concept had the potential to transform the patient experience by making healthcare more transparent and navigable.
Why we chose Concept 3:
The decision to move forward with Concept 3 was driven by its potential for a significant and lasting impact on patient engagement and education. It addressed the critical need for personalized health information, which was consistently highlighted as a pain point in our research. Moreover, it provided a scalable solution that could evolve with patient needs and healthcare advancements, ensuring sustained relevance and value.
By choosing Concept 3, we aimed to create a robust system that empowers patients, enhances their healthcare experience, and supports better health outcomes through informed decision-making and active participation in their care journey.
Hear their stories: What matters to patients?
Following our decision to focus on providing personalized health information, we conducted another series of in-depth interviews with patients. Our goal was to understand what truly matters to them when it comes to having access to a reliable health information portal and to gather insights into their current experiences with existing portals they have used.
Key Insights from Patient Interviews
Lack of Aftercare Summary
Patients expressed a strong desire for a summary of their doctor visits, especially after intense appointments where they are overloaded with information that is difficult to retain. They wanted a clear and concise aftercare summary to help them remember what was discussed and what steps to take next.
One patient mentioned,
“Dovetale is missing the aftercare summary piece which is really useful to patients.”
Language Barriers
A significant challenge highlighted by PFAs (Patient and Family Advisors) and patients was the difficulty international patients face in communicating and comprehending English. This language barrier makes it challenging for them to effectively use available health tools and understand their care instructions.
Another interviewee shared,
“Healthcare system is broken, everything is in silos.”
Siloed Healthcare System
The fragmented nature of the hospital system was a recurring theme. Patients and PFAs noted that the care team often lacked comprehensive information about a patient’s progress. Additionally, there was no efficient way to share a patient’s medical history if they moved to a new city, leading to continuity of care issues.
As one PFA noted,
“We would go to these appointments, and it was just tests, jargon, and constant information. I would write down what I could but as they got longer, I needed to bring my son along to have two people hearing the instructions.”
Feeling Excluded from the Care Process
Patients frequently felt excluded from the healthcare process due to communication gaps. They found that doctors often used medical jargon they didn’t understand, which made them feel disempowered and less likely to seek ongoing care. This lack of empathy and clear communication was a significant barrier to patient engagement.
One patient explained,
“Unfortunately, right now, people go to Dr. Google and there are a lot of people that are scared to death. A lot of people think the doctors are up on a pedestal and you do not question the why and the how.”
Understanding Their Experiences
To gain a deeper understanding of their experiences with existing portals, we asked patients about the platforms they had used and what they liked or disliked about them. Common complaints included:
Lack of Aftercare Summary: Patients felt the absence of a clear aftercare summary significantly hindered their ability to follow through on medical advice.
Language Barriers: International patients struggled with English, making it difficult to use health tools effectively.
Siloed Information: The fragmented healthcare system made it challenging for patients to have a seamless care experience.
Exclusion from Care Process: The use of medical jargon and lack of empathetic communication made patients feel excluded from their own care journey.
By listening to these stories and understanding their needs and frustrations, we were able to gather valuable insights that would guide us in designing a patient-centric health information portal. Our goal was to create a platform that not only meets but exceeds patient expectations, empowering them to take an active role in their healthcare journey.
Defining our persona
In designing a patient-centric health information portal, it was essential to deeply understand our users—their needs, behaviors, pain points, and motivations. Creating a persona allowed us to humanize our users and ensure that we were designing with empathy and user-centricity at the forefront. The persona served as a constant reminder of the people we are designing for, helping the team stay aligned with patient needs throughout the design process.
User Persona
Meet Emily
Emily is a busy marketing manager living in Toronto with her husband and two children. She leads a hectic life balancing work and family responsibilities. Recently, Emily was diagnosed with a knee condition that requires surgery. This news has added stress to her already busy schedule. She relies on online resources to understand her health condition but finds it overwhelming and often misleading.
Needs and Goals:
Access to Clear Information: Desires a reliable source of health information that is easy to understand and readily accessible.
Seamless Care Coordination: Wants all her healthcare providers to be on the same page regarding her treatment and progress.
Active Participation: Aspires to be an active participant in her healthcare decisions and feels empowered by understanding her treatment options.
Time Management: Needs tools that help her manage her health appointments and follow-ups efficiently.
Findings
Insights & Opportunities Patients want to feel like experts in their health conditions but the current health experience did not make them feel like a part of their healthcare journey.
Continuum of Care
Patients like to stay informed about their care but often lack the required tools for this.
Information Dearth
Proactive information provision is perceived as a relief when patients do not have to chase medical staff for information.
Patient Involvement
Patients are often relegated to the sidelines in their healthcare journey, feeling constantly out of the loop.
Healthcare Distrust
Patients often believe that doctors are on a pedestal and should not be questioned, even when it involves their health, leading to lack of trust and resistance to seeking medical help.
Competitive Research: Heuristic Evaluation of Dovetale
Dovetale is a secure online portal developed by St. Joseph’s Healthcare Hamilton, designed to help patients manage their health information and access medical records. During our initial research, we discovered that many patients were already using Dovetale but felt it could be more effective and user-friendly. To identify gaps and opportunities for improvement, I conducted a thorough heuristic evaluation of Dovetale.
Heuristic Evaluation
Objective: Evaluate Dovetale's current design and functionality to pinpoint areas for improvement and potential enhancements for our proposed solution.
Focus Areas:
Aesthetic and Design
Functionality for Patients
Identifying the Gap and the Opportunity for MyHealth
While Dovetale provides a secure online portal for managing health information and accessing medical records, it falls short in several critical areas that are essential for empowering patients as active participants in their healthcare journey.
Our heuristic evaluation and user feedback highlighted key gaps:
Personalization and Proactivity:
Gap: Dovetale lacks personalized and proactive health information. Patients often feel they must chase medical staff for updates and explanations, leading to frustration and disengagement.
Opportunity: MyHealth aims to provide tailored health information that is proactively delivered to patients, ensuring they have the necessary knowledge to manage their health effectively and confidently.
User Engagement and Experience:
Gap: The current design of Dovetale is dated and cluttered, making it difficult for users to navigate and find relevant information quickly.
Opportunity: MyHealth will feature a modern, intuitive design that enhances user experience, making it easier for patients to engage with their health information and take meaningful actions.
Comprehensive Aftercare and Language Support:
Gap: Dovetale does not adequately support aftercare summaries or cater to patients with language barriers. Patients need accessible and clear aftercare information to understand their health better.
Opportunity: MyHealth will include comprehensive aftercare summaries and multilingual support, ensuring all patients, including international ones, can easily access and comprehend their health information.
Integrated Care Team Communication:
Gap: Dovetale operates in silos, with limited communication and information sharing across the patient’s care team, leading to disjointed care experiences.
Opportunity: MyHealth will facilitate seamless communication among the entire care team, ensuring everyone involved in a patient’s care is well-informed and coordinated, thus improving overall care quality.
Design principles & guidelines
In designing the MyHealth portal, we adhered to several key principles to ensure the platform meets the needs of patients, healthcare professionals, and the overall healthcare system. These principles guided our design decisions and helped create a user-centric, effective, and engaging platform.
Solutioning & Iterating
Storyboards
We used storyboards to visualize the current patient experience and guide us in developing a storyboard of what our reimagined experience should feel like. This method helped us understand the patient journey, identify pain points, and conceptualize improvements before moving into high-fidelity designs.
User Scenario: Emily’s Knee Replacement Surgery Journey
Current Experience:
Emily has just learned that she needs knee replacement surgery. During her doctor visit, she feels overwhelmed by the barrage of information. After the visit, she struggles to find reliable information about the surgery, understand the recovery process, and know what to expect. She is also unsure how to keep track of her appointments, medications, and follow-up visits, leaving her feeling lost and anxious.
Reimagined Experience:
Emily receives the news about her knee replacement surgery. She logs into the MyHealth portal and finds a personalized, easy-to-understand overview of her upcoming surgery. The portal provides her with detailed, jargon-free information about the procedure, recovery process, and what to expect at each stage. It also includes a personalized timeline of her appointments, medication schedules, and follow-up visits. Interactive features allow Emily to ask questions, watch explanatory videos, and connect with other patients who have undergone similar procedures, ensuring she feels supported and informed throughout her healthcare journey.
Below is the storyboard illustrating the current experience and our reimagined experience for Emily:
Current Experience Storyboard:
Doctor Visit: Emily receives overwhelming information about her surgery.
Post-Visit Confusion: She leaves the doctor's office unsure about the next steps.
Searching for Information: Emily turns to Google and gets lost in a sea of unreliable information.
Managing Appointments: She struggles to keep track of her appointments and medications, feeling overwhelmed and anxious.
Reimagined Experience Storyboard:
Doctor Visit: Emily receives news about her surgery and logs into the MyHealth portal.
Personalized Information: The portal provides a clear, jargon-free overview of her surgery and recovery process.
Interactive Learning: Emily watches videos and reads articles tailored to her procedure, helping her understand what to expect.
Managing Appointments: The portal offers a personalized timeline of appointments, medications, and follow-up visits, making it easy for Emily to stay organized and informed.
Community Support: Emily connects with other patients who have had similar surgeries, gaining support and advice from her peers.
By comparing these storyboards, we identified key areas for improvement and used these insights to guide the design and development of the MyHealth portal, ensuring it meets the needs of patients like Emily.
Design, Test, Iterate
Prototypes, decisions and constraints
Patient Onboarding Screens
The patient onboarding experience is crucial for setting the tone and ensuring that users feel welcomed and supported from the very beginning. Here are the designs and design decisions made for the two key onboarding screens:
Initial Onboarding Screen:
Feature Highlights:
Design Decision: We integrated visual and textual highlights of the key features such as personalized health information, appointment tracking, and access to educational resources.
Rationale: By showcasing the main functionalities upfront, we aim to quickly inform users about the benefits of using MyHealth, enhancing their initial engagement and setting clear expectations.
Preferences Onboarding Screen:
Language Selection:
Design Decision: We included options for users to select their preferred language.
Rationale: This feature ensures that non-English speaking users can access information in their native language, making the portal more inclusive and accessible.
Adapt Content for Screen Readers:
Design Decision: We provided a toggle to enable screen text adaptation for screen readers.
Rationale: This design choice supports visually impaired users, ensuring that they can navigate the portal and access information effectively.
Enable Tap Gestures:
Design Decision: We included a toggle to enable tap gestures, making the interface more user-friendly for individuals with motor impairments.
Rationale: This feature enhances accessibility for users with motor impairments, allowing them to interact with the portal more easily and comfortably.
Login Screen
The patient onboarding experience is crucial for setting the tone and ensuring that users feel welcomed and supported from the very beginning. Here are the designs and design decisions made for the two key onboarding screens:
Design Decision: Design for Trust and Security
Objective: To ensure that users feel secure and confident when accessing the MyHealth portal.
Implementation:
We designed the login screen to allow patients to use their existing Dovetale account credentials without the need to create new ones.
Data Minimization: Adopted the principle of data minimization in the design process, ensuring that only the essential user information needed for a specific interaction was collected and processed, reducing potential risks associated with data storage and management.
Rationale: By leveraging their existing Dovetale account, we reduce friction and ensure a seamless transition for users who are already familiar with the Dovetale system. This approach also capitalizes on the trust and security measures already established with Dovetale.
Constraint: Access Limited to Dovetale Account Holders
Rationale: Limiting access to existing Dovetale account holders ensures that only verified patients can use the portal, maintaining a high level of security and data integrity. This constraint also simplifies user management and support, as the user base is already established and familiar with Dovetale's security protocols.
Home/Dashboard Screen
Design Decision: Centralized and Intuitive Information Hub
Objective: To provide patients with a comprehensive and accessible overview of their recent activities and upcoming appointments.
Implementation:
Recent Activities: Display the most recent activities on the patient's account, including recent prescriptions and doctor visits.
Attached Notes: Include a section for attached notes from recent visits, ensuring patients can quickly reference important information.
Appointments Calendar: Incorporate a calendar view that allows patients to preview their upcoming appointments at a glance.
Doctor's Notes Screen
Design Decision: Enhance Information Accessibility and Patient Engagement
Objective: To provide patients with detailed information from their doctor visits and facilitate ongoing communication.
Implementation:
Information Accessibility: Upon selecting a doctor’s note from the table of notes, users can view detailed information from their visit, including discussions, medications prescribed, and follow-up instructions.
Patient Engagement: Added a comment section where patients can drop questions they might have after reviewing the notes, fostering continuous engagement and clarifying any doubts they couldn't address during the visit.
Rationale: Providing detailed visit notes ensures that patients have a clear understanding of their healthcare journey. The comment section empowers patients to stay engaged and informed, promoting better health outcomes through continuous communication with their healthcare providers.
Testing and Iteration
User Testing and Feedback
We tested the first round of prototypes with two users, Sahar and Debra. The feedback and insights obtained from this testing round highlighted the need for improvements to the UI of the Doctor’s Notes to enhance the patient experience.
Feedback Highlights:
Positive Reaction to Onboarding Guide: Testers appreciated the guide for the software, which helps onboard inexperienced users and familiarizes them with the app. They also confirmed the service could be translated into multiple languages.
Need for Detailed Information: Testers pointed out that patients often receive paper instructions for medications and steps to follow, which can lead to retention issues and confusion. They emphasized the importance of having a detailed list of key steps, medications, and potential signs to watch out for, such as blood clots. Creating a single platform to centralize all this information would be particularly useful for patients undergoing surgeries, raising awareness of post-surgery risks.
New Insights and Design Improvements
New Insight:
Many patients are unsure about what to expect, which medications to discontinue or continue, and what symptoms to monitor post-surgery. This uncertainty often leads to patients overlooking critical symptoms, which can result in adverse health outcomes.
Improvements to the Doctor’s Notes Feature:
Medication Calendar:
Design Decision: Instead of simply listing the patient's medications, we implemented a calendar view to provide a clear and organized schedule of medication intake.
Rationale: This calendar helps patients keep track of their medications, ensuring they follow their prescribed regimen accurately and avoid missing doses.
Personalized Pre-Surgery Information Guide:
Design Decision: Introduced a learning module that offers personalized information and instructions to patients about what to expect before, during, and after surgery.
Rationale: This guide helps patients prepare for their surgery by providing detailed instructions, including medications to discontinue or continue and symptoms to watch for post-surgery. It aims to reduce patient anxiety and improve post-surgery outcomes by ensuring they are well-informed and prepared.
Final designs
The final prototype was improved to include a medication calendar, patient pre-surgery information guide and an AR Interactive Wayfinder to ease anxiety on the day of the procedure.
Improved Doctor's Notes and Medication Calendar
Personalized Pre-surgery Information Guide
Interactive AR Wayfinder
Overview
The Interactive AR Wayfinder is designed to serve as an indoor navigation tool for the hospital. It uses real scenarios and pictures of the hospital layout to assist patients in finding their way, especially on the day of their surgery appointment and during regular visits. This approach aims to enhance patient control and reduce anxiety by providing clear and intuitive navigation through the hospital.
Features and Functionality
Realistic Hospital Layout: Utilizes real images and scenarios from the hospital to provide an authentic and familiar navigation experience.
Path Highlighting: The highlighted blue area clearly marks the path patients need to walk through, ensuring they can easily follow the route.
Design Rationale
Reducing Anxiety: By providing clear and detailed navigation, the tool helps reduce the anxiety of patients who might already be feeling overwhelmed by their upcoming surgery or hospital visit.
Empowering Patients: This feature is part of our broader goal to empower patients, giving them more control over their healthcare journey and helping them feel more at ease in the hospital environment.
Improving Efficiency: Ensures that patients can find their way without needing to ask for directions, thereby saving time and reducing the burden on hospital staff.
Reflection & Learnings
Working on the MyHealth project underscored the critical importance of engaging directly with patients to uncover their real needs. I learned the importance of empathy and quality user experience in clinical pathways where users are likely at their most vulnerable.
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