This doctor is transforming healthcare with an intelligent app
Dr. Claire Novorol spent 10 years specializing in Clinical Genetics. Today she’s the co-founder of Ada, an AI-powered doctor app.
But there’s more.
In this week’s UX Crunch — London — several entrepreneurs and designers share how they overcame difficulties in the healthcare sector and arrived at innovative solutions.
Ada: You personal health companion
Using a conversational interface to analyze its patients, Ada hopes to leverage its incredible medical expertise in providing accurate diagnoses.
The product is the combined effort of over 100 doctors and scientists.
Back in the days when Dr. Claire worked in a clinic, she used a web application to aid diagnosis based on the likelihood of diseases.
Her idea was to translate this tool to the mass market. Yet there was a big mismatch in knowledge between a doctor and the laymen.
“I soon realized that, even as a doctor, my assumptions about patients were not reliable. Only by talking to lots of GPs was I able to grasp real user needs.”
She needed to “dumb down” the application for ordinary people. To do that, Dr. Claire partnered with a UX designer to create an interface suitable for the consumer.
This involved translating complex medical terms into patient-friendly words.
Establishing trust with the user was particularly important. The chatbot needed to have a trustworthy personality. It also needed to know when to be serious or fun.
In cases when sensitive information was required from the patient, the chatbot prompted permission by giving reasons for asking the question.
Artificial thinking states mimicking the time to formulate a response instilled confidence in the patient.
Pauses in between questions allowed patients to take their time in their assessment, stress-free.
Another key area of the design is the post-diagnosis journey. Ada translates knowledge about their patients into a report which can then be analyzed by a General Practitioner for further treatment.
Not all doctors welcome consumer tech. Some of them get annoyed when patients hold an app in their face containing a patient diary.
Ada aims to make sense of the data so GPs will find the report useful and actionable, enabling them to continue the conversation at the clinic.
“Our design philosophy is: friendly conversation underpinned by medical precision.”
Ada’s goal is to become a long term health consultation partner. To achieve that, they’ll continue focusing on two core capabilities — an improved engine for medical precision and a trusted interface which feels natural to users.
Echo: NHS Prescription Reminder & Tracking App
Yet another business originating from the founder’s problem. Echo’s Stephen Bourke suffered from chronic depression and noticed the hassle in obtaining a steady supply of medicines from the drugstore.
By optimizing the process, he was able to create a system that helped patients fight chronic illnesses more efficiently.
Stephen’s advice for healthcare startups is to work with the existing system, and respect people’s health.
“You have to accept the fact that no matter how much people may love your service, they’ll never share.”
Privacy design is a big issue in healthcare. Keeping the patient in mind at all times will save you from embarrassing them at the wrong instance. He gave an example of how a medical notification on someone’s smartphone could cause embarrassment from colleagues.
There is also no easy way to do testing in healthcare, because human lives are at stake. “You can’t promise contraception and provide viagra to a test subject.”
Users often forgot about using the app responsibly. In order to help them remember our terms, the signup process was intentionally designed with more friction.
A confetti animation helped users remember the agreement they made.
“If they didn’t remember our terms, we’d say: but don’t you remember the awesome confetti coming down?”
Lastly, there was no definite way to personify users, as they varied greatly based on their conditions. “We had a patient who ordered a box full of medicines each month. Try designing a notification for that!”
In the end, they had to devise a whole system of simple instructions for patient’s medication.
Suffolk 111 Online: NHS emergency and urgent care services
Essentially, this is an online concierge for emergency care service.
The idea is similar to that of Ada. But rather than build a report for patients, 111 Online directs them to the most relevant service.
“Our aim is to provide medical service to the right people at the right time.”
The product designer talked about a medical triage of questions used to diagnose patients. Currently, 86% of their users get through all the questions.
The key is to break down questions into clear and simple sentences. “The user journey consists of gradually learning about the user.”
Another aspect of the service is to provide self-care advice for patients. Symptoms change over time and, depending on the situation, patients could treat the symptoms before healthcare service reaches them.
Working within the System
Healthcare is inherently a tough space for designers.
Regulators hamper innovation. Privacy and distress around health make user research and A/B testing a pain.
And even when you’ve got the product right, embarrassed patients may not be prepared to scream about their results.
As designers, the solution is to work with doctors and your country’s healthcare system.
We need to create products that mediate well between patients and doctors. It should help doctors do their work. The goal should not be to undermine the system.
Every time we enter a clinic, the GP goes through the repetitive procedure of asking preliminary questions. Technology could potentially streamline that conversation.
Conclusion
Even today, 1 billion people lack any access to healthcare. There will never be enough doctors in the world.
People are desperate to learn about their bodies. One in 20 of Google searches are related to healthcare.
In the future, technology will empower patients to have better knowledge of their health and integrate that data into the system.
Despite major challenges in the healthcare sector, progress in UX seems hopeful.
Call To Action
Learning is behavior change.
Will these insights change the way you design — or how you think about your problem?
The companies mentioned are looking for UX designers interested in healthcare. If you’re one of them, make sure you reach out.
Thank You
Did you learn anything new from this read? Has it inspired you in any way?
If you enjoyed this read, please let me know by leaving a comment or dropping me a message on LinkedIn :)
To see the work I do, visit my website at scottmilburn.design
