DRUG ADHERENCE
APP AND SERVICE
PROOF-OF-CONCEPT
CHALLENGE
For a group of top 20 global pharmaceutical manufacturers, transform poor adherence of chronic disease medication.
Make taking medication for chronic disease an educational experience amongst a community of patients.
Create a streamlined patient and HCP journey to significantly reduce time spent obtaining re-peat perscriptions.
Length of Project - 9 months, UX and Service Design effort - 8 weeks
APPROACH
Mentored a junior design team during engagement in both qualitative and quantitative research to determine needs and goals of chronic disease patients.
Applied behavioural economics during the iteration and testing of prototypes and shape the service offering.
Investigated new service offerings, and created blueprints of new digital health service for adherence.
OUTCOME
Reduced touch points from 12 to 9 (touchpoint: automating re-peat prescriptions)
Introduced a MVS providing integration points for chronic disease medical specialists to monitor patients (Interaction points: Taking medication and educating other patients.)
One pharmaceutical developed an MVP for FDA trials.
After 12 months of iterative design, the team achieved an iF Design Award (2018).
ADHERING TO DRUGS RESEARCH
Research started with the 'World Health Organisation' who had identified key attributes and needs across various ages and social-cultural backgrounds. We created user types from the research, where I scripted the recommendations into questions and alternated as moderator/interviewer in interviews with 12 people who took chronic disease medication. Due to budget constraints, credible how current organisational structures with Doctors, Caregivers and the Pharmaceutical were obtained from the 'Welcome Trust' .
Defining key attributes and understanding pains, gains, jobs-to-be-done
Together we looked at the mental models of patients not adhering, where I guided the team to look at jobs patients (and other stakeholders) currently do and the journeys' they make. Our synthesis discussions determined three key insights/unmet needs: 1) Achieving dosage goals, 2) Social and Motivational support, 3) Information gaps during drug course.
The current patient user journey, key trends and patterns in behaviour
I used these insights as criteria to look at existing smart adherence solutions in the market. From my analysis, I created a proposition map to guide the teams value proposition and also determined our target audience should focus on young professionals who worked full-time and owned a smartphone.
“Take, tapp, reward - One tap of your prescription on your phone, and you visualise goals that require little of no conscious thought to help you complete the recommended dose.”
IDEATING USING BEHAVIOURAL ECONOMICS
We determined a behaviour change intervention was a requirement in the solution. I used key insights from user type attributes and journey maps to create a 'Behaviour Matrix', which the team used as criteria to ideate solutions and support:- patient processes at decision making stages, features needed to action decisions, desired response from stakeholders, what support was needed, and metrics for success when patients changed their behaviour.
TAPP user types and behaviour matrix concept ranking
SERVICE OFFERINGS
Two service offers were pitched to project sponsors and business developers working with the pharmaceutical manufacturers. Both offerings included two primary touchpoints 1) NFC aerial on blister packs which could be tapped against a phone, and 2) a digital interface focused on providing goal setting and tracking information (an app) where AI learnt dosage behaviours.
Community-focused: Rewarded by other patients for staying on track using A.I.
Patient-focused: Patients create a goal setting journey around their lifestyle using A.I.
STAKEHOLDERS AND THEIR DATA
To determine technical feasibility, I led a data journey workshop with the team and a cloud developer. We used the 'Behaviour Matrix' to score technical risks, security and permissions and where AI would curate personalisation across datasets from all stakeholders, physical technology needed to acquire data, and connectivity needed to transport the data.
Exploring the ecosystem, mapping stakeholder data journeys
CHOOSING AN OFFER: LEAN EXPERIMENTS
We created a number of design hypothesis where I rapidly designed with the team low fidelity architecture maps of the service offerings. We did this so we could sketch and create paper prototypes, and conducted several lean experiments with 8 people managing chronic disease and a healthcare business developer. Everyone liked the patient-focused offering over the community one, as they wanted to be in control of their goals as opposed to others telling them what to do.
“I wouldn’t like it if other people ranked my performance, I’d feel like they were judging me.”
Lean experimenting design hypothesis
Trigger mapping communicated the service encounter
Organisational design considerations
I led a service blueprint workshop with the team to help them visualise the chosen offering, understanding what the joined up experience could look like across touchpoints, stakeholders and the organisational changes that would be needed to implement the service. This made the scope more concrete around development requirements for the NFC blister sticker and App.
Blueprint showing part of onboarding to the service
TESTING AND ITERATING SERVICE TOUCHPOINTS
CREATING CONNECTED BLISTER PACKS
A behaviour that would be intrinsic to the design of the service, was tapping drug blister packs to a smartphone. Electronic and Polymer engineers generated a low-cost NFC antenna and blister sticker perforation, to cover a blister pack. Prototypes were made, where blister packs were filled with smarties, and force tested by people where we determined the right polymer strength to break the NFC circuit.
APP DESIGN ITERATIONS AND USER FLOWS
We produced low level sketches to test whether certain features met user needs. One particular task was related to money rebates for taking medication on time. During a usability test we quickly found that users felt they were being 'bribed'. After several design iterations and further user testing we determined that merging goal setting and achieving those goals with a reward pertinent to their lifestyle i.e. free cinema and discount meals, provided more personalised value.
App iterated design overview and low-fidelity architecture.
Once we validated our designs with users, I created navigation flows demonstrating how patients would onboard to the app, configure and set goals, set reminders in calendars, rewards and indicate when a blister pack had registered a dosage. This served as a reference for our developer, so that each individual state wouldn't need to be laid out by the visual designer.
Prototype of IoT packaging with App mockup
Applying the NFC blister pack sticker
FINAL DESIGNS
Look and feel branding for the blister sticker and the app were worked through with a visual designer, and the final designs were produced for software developers to code up.
