Step 1.

Discovery

Patient Interviews
Patients with chronic illnesses and patients who had just undergone major surgery were the core populations that we targeted. Those patients were the most at risk for exacerbations, and our founders (a heart surgeon and a cardiologist) had access to patients in those demographics. To learn about their experience with Together Clinic and to understand more about their behaviors (and motivators) between appointments, I planned and conducted patient interviews throughout our design process.

Interview notes

Clinical Shadowing and Interviews
To better empathize with medical staff, I completed several onsite shadowing sessions, paying close attention to how nurses and doctors used software in their offices. I also helped organize and lead several interviews with staff and providers. We typically explored their pain points and desires around patient care and even business pursuits.

Mapping the Process
The concept of Together Clinic was invented by our founders, and I worked closely with them to map out the process as it existed when I joined. This gave us a foundational model that we could evolve over time.

Process mapping

Landscape Analysis - Electronic Health Records
As another piece of our discovery efforts, I also explored other software solutions in the medical space. We wanted to better understand the ins-and-outs of electronic health records (EHRs) so that we could better integrate into those existing clinical workflows.

Step 2.

Solutioning

Sketching, Mocks, and Prototyping
Together with a small team of engineers, I held ideation and sketching sessions to address patient and clinical staff pain-points. For instance, we developed a notification engine to help re-engage our patients if they ever forgot their online checkups. For any new feature, I started low-fidelity, iterated until the concept was more clear, and then moved to prototyping and user (scenario) testing. I used the Adobe Creative Suite to produce high-fidelity mocks, and often leveraged PowerPoint for basic prototyping.

Checkup question sketching

Chronic Care Management (CCM)
Although the Together Clinic had demonstrated medical efficacy in reducing patient exacerbations, medical staff were understandably resistant to take on additional work without added revenue. To help address such concerns, we decided to pursue additional features that would help qualify medical providers for Chronic Care Management (CCM) - a Medicare program for creating and carrying out care plans for the chronically ill. With CCM, our application could truly be considered a revenue generator and even justify additional staffing.

Step 2.1

Marketing & Outreach

Communicating the Potential
To help quickly sell the vision and value of Together Clinic during the early stages of the company, I developed a variety of marketing materials (using the Adobe Creative Suite). I shared those materials at medical conferences and office visits, and over time, I even branched out to web marketing via outlets like Google Ads and even Twitter. All the while, I sought out feedback to help inform our product decisions.

Patient and clinical staff journey

Case study

Twitter page

Business cards

Closing

Delivery & Impact

As we released features, we monitored usage trends via Google Analytics, conducted user feedback sessions, and tried to refine our approach. While I can't show the inner workings of the Together Clinic application due to proprietary concerns, I've listed the features that I worked on below.

Feature Mix

• Patient checkups
• Notification engine (for both patients and clinical users)
• Patient dashboard (for clinical users)
• Login and account management
• Patient overview and trend data

Key Results

Together Clinic landing page