Project Management | UX Research | UI Design
Information Architecture & UI Design for the knowRX© Health Physician Portal
MAY-JUNE 2023
INDUSTRY: HEALTHCARE
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PROJECT OVERVIEW
ABOUT
knowRX Health© Aims to Provide User Centered Tools
KnowRX Health is a digital health company that facilitates secure information exchange among patients, healthcare providers, and researchers.
KnowRX Health prioritizes inclusivity by engaging diverse communities, empowering patients with treatment knowledge, and leveraging machine learning to optimize health outcomes.
PROJECT BRIEF
Improving Care Team & Patient Collaboration with PIXS
For this project, we have been asked by knowRX Health to develop the Physician Information Exchange System portal or PIXS. This portal will allow physicians and care teams to collaborate with each other, monitor patients, access continuing education, and stay up to date on relevant drug research.
SERVICES PROVIDED
UX/UI DESIGN | INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
DESIGN SPRINT
My Role: Project Management | UX Research | UI Design
This was a team project completed over 2 months following a modified Design Thinking process (d.school). We chose Design Thinking for this project because it would allow us to focus on users, encourage collaboration, and help us find innovative solutions that align with our goals by challenging assumptions, asking questions, and understanding complex problems before finding solutions.
Our design toolkit included Figma, Figjam, Illustrator, Google Docs, Google Forms, & Google Sheets.
PROBLEM
Physicians Need a Better Way to Access Information
Healthcare teams lack convenient access to patient records, critical drug research, and continuing education. There is a need for a centralized platform that provides streamlined access to these resources, improving patient care and enabling efficient professional development for healthcare providers.
SOLUTION
Getting Everyone on the Same Page
Our solution is a comprehensive platform that transforms healthcare providers' access to vital drug research and continuing education.
By seamlessly integrating knowRX's existing patient app, physicians gain critical access to patient insights and statistics. With a streamlined and user-friendly experience, our solution allows access to a shared knowledge base, improves coordination within care teams, and ultimately elevates the quality of patient care.
DISCOVER
MARKET & USER RESEARCH
What Tools do Healthcare Providers Use?
Discovery began with learning about what tools are currently being used by healthcare providers. Through our research, we discovered the Epic, Cerner, and Meditech systems captured over 75% of the market. After the leading three, other systems including Allscripts, eClinicalWorks, and many more make up the rest of the market.
COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS
Recognizing a Need for Education & Outpatient Tools
To gain comprehensive insights into leading healthcare systems, we conducted a competitive analysis of Epic, Cerner, Allscripts, Meditech, and eClinicalWorks. Our goal was to understand the features and functionalities accessed by care teams and establish a baseline for the PIXS portal.
From our analysis, we discovered that while these systems offer robust tools, not all of them provide integrated continuing education. Additionally, we found that most patient tracking systems can be modified for both inpatient and outpatient facilities, but only one system prioritizes outpatient facilities.
USER SURVEYS
Healthcare Providers Have Many Options
Knowing that there were many tools available to healthcare providers, we were curious to learn more about the specific systems people were using and their approach to continuing education and learning about drug updates.
We then conducted 2 online surveys that received a combined total of 18 respondents. From the surveys, we learned the following:
Those surveyed included Physicians, Nurses, Occupational Therapists, Paramedics, Medical Assistants, Medical Business Managers, and Medical Revenue Managers.
Of those surveyed, over 75% regularly access patient tracking software as it is applicable to their job. Epic, Cerner, and Meditech were the top 3 software systems used.
Over half of the respondents access continuing education through online courses or attend in-person conferences.
The top ways respondents stay up to date on drug-related information are through medical literature, clinical decision support software, and colleagues.
INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
What Information is the Most Important?
With the understanding that physicians have limited schedules and a lot of information they need to know, we conducted an online survey to better understand what information should be prioritized within the portal. When looking at a patient’s file, care providers ranked the following as the most important:
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List of medications and supplements
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Electronic medical records
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A patient’s demographics
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Medication plan adherence
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Previous diagnoses
USER INTERVIEWS
Care Teams are Limited or Overwhelmed by their Tools
To understand healthcare providers' experiences with available tools, we interviewed six professionals. Although initially targeting physicians, we pivoted and expanded our pool to include other care providers due to time constraints.
The interviews revealed common themes regarding difficulty with patient tracking and accessing new drug information & continuing education.
DEFINE
PROBLEM
Physicians Need a Better Way to Access Information
From our user interviews and affinity mapping we were able to identify 3 key problem spaces:
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Care teams don't always have access to all patient records of medications, diagnosis, or care providers which leads to risk when providing care.
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Healthcare providers don't have a singular platform to learn about new drugs & medication making it difficult to stay up to date.
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There are too many options for accessing continuing education which makes it hard to keep track of certifications & licenses because they aren't in one place.
How might we create a centralized platform that provides healthcare teams with convenient access to critical drug research, patient information, and continuing education in one streamlined location?
USER PERSONA & JOURNEY
The Rushed Physician
The Rushed Physician is an outpatient caregiver who works in a multidisciplinary specialty medical practice. They have been practicing medicine for 15 years. They are passionate about providing comprehensive care to their patients and staying up-to-date with the latest advancements in medical research and technology.
Below you'll find the Rushed Physician's user journey.
Prepared &
Ready to Go
They log into the patient tracking software to check their schedule and plan their fully booked day efficiently with back-to-back appointments.
Unknown
Patient History
The first patient reports feeling dizzy and experiencing itchy eyes. When asked about their recent medications, the patient is unable to recall the names prescribed by other doctors.
Further Research Needed
Eventually, the patient recalls having a photo of their medications on their phone. The physician, unfamiliar with one of the medications, briefly steps away to research online while conducting a test on the patient.
Running Behind Schedule
After extensive research, the physician discovers that the medications are interacting negatively, resulting in the observed side effects. However, the time spent on research causes the physician to be delayed for the next appointment.
DESIGN & DELIVER
SOLUTION
Easy to Access Resources
We designed an intuitive and easy-to-navigate platform that allows healthcare providers to quickly view patients, search & access drug research, and educational resources.
Seamless Integration of Patient App Data
By including data from the knowRX Health patient app PIXS allows physicians to gain powerful insights about their patients. With patient participation, physicians can pre-check for drug interactions before prescribing medications.
Personalized Certification & Progress Tracking
We designed features that enable healthcare providers to track their progress in completing continuing education requirements, earn badges, and generate reports for credentialing purposes.
Curation of Trusted Sources
We included a platform for reputable sources of drug research and continuing education content, such as peer-reviewed journals, accredited institutions, and industry experts, to provide reliable and up-to-date information.
Care Team Collaboration
We incorporated features that facilitate collaboration and discussion among healthcare providers, fostering a community of practice where they can share insights, ask questions, and engage in professional discussions.
NEXT STEPS
Usability Testing
In the next step, we would perform usability testing with physicians on the high fidelity prototype to ensure the portal meets their needs and uncover any pain points. Since we had prioritized user interviews and surveys with physicians and care team members to help inform the portal design and its content, usability testing will allow for us to understand if there are opportunities to streamline and make the portal more efficient.
Portal Expansion
The intention of our client is to develop PIXS to support all job functions in the medical industry, not just physicians. With that, next steps would include repeating this process to create portals for other care team members, medical facility executives, pharmacists, and pharmaceutical companies.
Investor Buy-in
PIXS is critical in attracting more knowRX investors. The team at knowRX is already in the process of building its network of physicians based on their development of the patient app. Having the PIXS portal that we created based off of in depth research will allow them to connect with investors in their next round of funding.
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