rA Health application
support for patients with rheumatic conditions
How can we enable people with Rheumatic conditions to on-board and self-manage their treatment in a simple, intuitive way?
Currently, patients need to keep their condition in check through regular medication and self-injection. The process is complex and there is a standard way of educating patients about this which doesn't allow for much personalization or control over the treatment. This application's role in the treatment process is to empower the patient with information that keeps them motivated and in-control.
the challenge:
Our client approached us with 2 primary objectives:
/ To validate the value proposition behind the app concept developed in the previous phase of work
/ To propose a feature list that would align with the value proposition
My Role
As the Research Lead for the project, my role was to decide and plan out how to go about testing and validating the app concept to receive actionable feedback from patients. Many a time, what people say they do & what people actually do, don't match. Hence the biggest challenge here was:
/ To design the right conversation guide and activities to triangulate and synthesize responses that were actionable for design
/ To keep the research plan general enough to be executed in Danish by a vendor whom we haven't worked with before (surprise!)
DISCOVER
DEFINE
PROTOTYPE
TEST
MVP PILOT
TEST IN-MARKET
IMProVEMENTS
self-injecting for rheumatic conditions can be scary..
We needed to find a way to make the process of self-injecting manageable and help people feel more empowered. Rheumatic conditions often have multiple pain symptoms and some days of extreme pain where-in they are unable to do any physical activity. In order to keep rheumatic conditions in check, one needs to constantly keep track of pain and manage the injection dosage correctly.
TREATMENT PROCESS
So how do we aid patientS with maintenance?
On the left are the group of feature ideas we came up with which could address the issues patients face during the maintenance phase of treatment. After a collective brainstorm, we chose the top 4 features that were most critical to the concept and did quick prototyping sprints to get these features ready for testing with patients.
Chosen features to prototype in Sprint 1:
/ Treatment Timeline
/ Tracking - Pain, Mood, Activity
/ Reminders
/ Health Overview
TIMELINE
This feature was meant to guide the patients through each step of the treatment experience from the 1st injection through 12 weeks and beyond, setting expectations & creating a sense of forward movement.
We wanted to understand from patients:
/ How do they currently go about understanding their treatment?
/ What is the most crucial information that they always ask for?
/ What are the problems with they way they go about getting this info?
/ If they had such a feature, how might they use it? How often?
/ Logging injections - how might want to they use this?
/ Would this help them self-manage their treatment?
/ What else do they need that they are not currently getting support with?
TRACKING
This feature tracks pain, energy levels, mood, etc. on a daily or weekly basis, monitoring progress and enabling a personalized app experience.
We wanted patients to tell us:
/ How do they currently keep track of their condition?
/ What do they specifically keep track of?
/ How often do they want to be tracking?
/ How is this tracked information used / helpful?
/ How do emotions play a role in their treatment process?
/ If they had such a tracker, how might they use it?
/ What did they find they didn't like or wouldn't do?
REMINDERS
This feature reminds patients when there is something important to be done, similar to reminders on any typical application. The aim was to help patients stay on track with their treatment and improve adherence.
We wanted patients to tell us:
/ What they often forget and what they needed reminders for?
/ In what kind of context did they need reminders?
/ How do they currently solve them problem of remembering things?
HEALTH SUMMARY
This is the feature which compiles and visualizes patient tracking data, demonstrating any progress made or any discrepancies.
*Per FDA rules, this application was not allowed to 'suggest' any methods of treatment or ways to alleviate pain and was only allowed to track and state facts. The rest is all only something a doctor is allowed to suggest, hence we were unable to make it as prescriptive as we initially wanted.
We wanted to understand from patients:
/ What did they want to see in a summary form?
/ If they had this, what might they use if for and how often?
/ How do they keep track of their overall health currently?
/ Would this help them with their doctor visits? If so, how?
// Research synthesis and Insights are currently underway and confidential*
PROTOTYPE ARCHITECTURE FOR FOLLOWING SPRINT
As we continue developing the prototype, we plan to build out some additional features to test the overall experience flow and interactions. The next step is to create a higher fidelity clickable prototype with dummy data to test not only feature alignment with value proposition but also usability of previously tested features.