Health Records Project 

I have done this project at IIT Bombay during HCI Monsoon course with the team included Balaji and Sunita. We were given the below problem statement but as we started working and dogged deeper into it, we found many pain points and design directions. As the duration of course was 15 days only we wrapped up with one finding and its design solution.

Problem statement 

As smartphones become more popular, it will be possible to store more things digitally, including health records. Patients often communicate with doctors over Whatsapp - sending pathology reports and obtaining prescriptions. But some doctors are wary of this. Some don't want to give a prescription on studying what might be incomplete information. Some are worried about the lost opportunity to charge fees. Others want to maintain a long term relationship, and would like to use the digital medium if it can help reduce efforts for the patient. In this project we will design a better communication app between doctors and patients in India.

Process We Followed

Affinity Mapping

Top Findings From Affinity

1.Finding a doctor is dependent on user’s knowledge, word of mouth etc.

2. Trust on a doctor does matter a lot for a patient.

3.Carrying medical record is not convenient

4.Patient wait time is long

5.Medical info lookup in case of emergency was critical

6.Keeping and storing medical records (prescriptions, test reports) is not structured

Personas

Design Solution For One Pain Point

Based on our research we picked up one pain point of users - "How to find a right doctor?" and designed a solution for it. We introduced our solution as a plugin in whatsapp where one can find a doctor and maintain health records.

Key Question -

Will the user be on boarded by initiating the call and communicating with the customer care.

Will the user get stuck during onboarding process?

Will they be comfortable discussing his/her health problem with the customer care?

Trigger

Would people opt for this?

Would people like to discuss the health problem with a customer care representative?

Will the user remember to go through the same steps? (repeat interviews)

Are they able to call the customer care?

Were they able to read the text message either in English or Hindi in the first screen?

User will be told that whats app has started a new service that can help him/her find doctors.

User is suffering from fever from past 2 days and wants to visit a doctor for treatment.

The user  is relatively new to this area and therefore does not know where to find a doctor.

Once the option to access new service is shown to the user in whatsapp, the user will be free to explore

and figure out how to call the customer care.

User will mention his health problem (fever) to the customer care representative on call.

The representative will then tell him/her that a list of doctors (only 2 options) will be shortly send on the same service

- 3 participants were not sure after reading the “press the call button…” message whom were they calling.

- 5 participants read the message in hindi.

- Female participants were more comfortable to share their health problems with the female representative.

- The participants on their own mentioned their location and budget while talking to the customer care representative.

- Calling Customer Care Representative was found to be helpful and easy

- Time of availability of doctor should be known since all the participants could visit only after duty hours (avoid pay cut)

- Budget is an important parameter for deciding a doctor from the options given

- The message wording was updated for clear communication.

- Questions pertaining to user’s preferred location and budget to be asked by the customer care representative.

- Preferably if the user can reach out to the same Customer Care Representative every time, it might help the user be more        comfortable and trust the Customer Care Representative .

- Now the updated list apart from location also mentions the availability time and consultation fee of the doctor.