WaCare | Digital Health Medical App
Design Strategies for a Win-Win in Doctor-Patient Relations:
Digitally Transforming the "Migraine Diary"
Project Duration: 2024.07 - 12
Device: Mobile (IOS / Android)
Team:
UIUX Designer *1, Project Manager *1
Company Medical Consultant *1, Frontend Engineer *1
Backend Engineer *1
My Role
In this design project, I served as the sole UI / UX designer, responsible for user experience research, interface design, and cross-team collaboration, ensuring that the design results meet both patient needs and physician workflow.
✧ User research analysis
In-depth interviews with patients and doctors to clearly document the core pain points and needs of the process.
✧ User Interface
Considering the behavioral patterns of both patients and doctors, identify the intersection points and design an intuitive and easy-to-use interface to optimize the interaction experience in recording symptoms and reduce the burden of filling out forms.
✧ Stakeholder communication
Regularly synchronize with engineers and stakeholders to ensure feasibility and consistency between design and technical implementation.
✧ Iteration and Testing
Collect feedback through testing to adjust interface details and process design, continuously improving satisfaction for both doctors and patients.
Partner
We have collaborated with the Department of Headache Medicine at China Medical University Hospital and the Artificial Intelligence Center to jointly develop a symptom recording feature specifically designed for patients with "migraine," which has been integrated into the WaCare App.
WaCare is a digital health platform that integrates "course learning," "health data recording," and "community interaction," dedicated to providing comprehensive health management services.
Product Overview
✧ Challenge
Initial consultation and medical history taking is cumbersome, placing a heavy burden on physicians
The fixed consultation format causes physicians to spend long hours each day repeating the same questions, which not only reduces consultation efficiency but also increases psychological stress.
Patients struggle to maintain self-recording
After leaving the guidance of medical professionals, patients often fail to continue completing daily records, leading to insufficient data to support diagnosis and treatment adjustments during follow-up visits.
✧ Change
Simplifying the Physician's SOP Inquiry Process
Provide digital tools that allow physicians to complete initial inquiries more efficiently, reducing the burden of repetitive tasks.
Improving Patient Condition Record Submission Rates
Design a user-friendly recording interface and reminder system to help patients easily document their symptoms in daily life, ensuring that they have complete data for diagnostic reference during follow-ups.
Suppose you are a migraine specialist, seeing about a hundred patients throughout the day from 8:00 AM to 10:00 PM, of which at least 50 are new patients. For new patients, the questioning process usually follows a fixed Q&A pattern, that is to say, every day you must repeat the same questions at least 50 times.
For each migraine patient entering the clinic for their "initial consultation," it takes an average of about 15 minutes from the time the physician starts the questioning until the diagnosis is completed.
| Repeatedly following the same consultation process for long periods has left many doctors feeling mentally and physically exhausted.
Next, let’s assume you are a migraine patient. After the appointment, the hospital gives you a handbook, requesting that you carry it with you and record your data at home daily. The handbook contains numerous questions that must be answered in handwriting; however, without reminders and guidance from a doctor or nurse nearby, will you really remember to fill it out completely every day?
During the follow-up visit, these self-recorded health data must be submitted to the doctor to assist in making professional judgments, determining the appropriate treatment based on your condition, or adjusting the medication dosage.
| The records after returning home are crucial for diagnosing conditions and formulating treatment plans, yet they are often overlooked!
Preliminary research
Interviewing both users' needs
We conducted individual interviews with Chinese medicine physicians and patients specializing in migraines to gain a deeper understanding of both parties' pain points and needs, and based on that, we designed solutions.
Pain points and needs of doctors
The initial consultation is tedious, placing a heavy burden on physicians
The fixed questioning pattern causes physicians to spend a long time every day repeating the same questions, which not only reduces consultation efficiency but also increases psychological pressure.
Difficulties in patients maintaining self-records
After leaving the professional guidance of medical personnel, patients often struggle to continue daily recordings, resulting in insufficient data to support diagnosis and treatment adjustments during follow-up visits.
Patient pain points & needs
Low Willingness to Record
Handwritten journals require filling out multiple items, which can be cumbersome and time-consuming. Patients often interrupt their recording due to laziness or lack of patience.
Inadequate Convenience
Forgetting to bring the journal or lacking tools such as pens can lead to missed recordings; medication is often overlooked due to a lack of reminders.
✧ The difficulties encountered when digging into pain points
The excavation of many pain points relies heavily on clinical and medical knowledge perspectives. This specialized knowledge presents challenges in conceptualizing the entire product.
⮕ After discussing this situation with the team and stakeholders, the company assigned an additional "medical consultant" (graduate student) to assist in advancing the project.
Inventory existing product features, achieve goals within the timeline using existing resources and manpower
The "Migraine Function" needs to be integrated into the WaCare App. To improve development efficiency, we carefully inventory the existing functions and evaluate their usability and extensibility to meet project requirements with minimal resources.
✧ Business Model: How does developing the 'Symptom Module' increase company revenue?
Module Re-licensing to Expand Revenue Sources
The company names the function that records symptom data as "Module Light." In the future, these completed modules that have been clinically implemented and validated can be standardized products, re-licensed or sold to other hospitals and clinics, increasing the company's business revenue sources.
Data Streamed to the WaPro System to Promote Product Sales
The data of patient records will be seamlessly integrated into the company's other core product, the WaPro system. When healthcare institutions need to further manage or analyze data, they can be guided to purchase the WaPro system, achieving a product upgrade from Module Light to the complete system, further enhancing revenue scale and market penetration.
Design strategy
Prioritize the development of new features and iterate on existing features.
The migraine data record consists of two modules: the "Scale Record" and the "Medication Record".
* The "Scale Record" includes two key parts: the headache diary and the disability scale, which is a newly developed feature.
* The "Medication Record" is part of the company's existing product features and will be improved during the design thinking process. If you want to learn more about the design thinking process, please click here to read.
✧How do I quickly align ideas with the team?
Quickly align ideas and engineering feasibility with the internal team through wireframes.
Headache Diary
Based on the headache diary topics published by the "Taiwan Headache Society," the design, layout, and formatting are created.
01 | How to add new "symptom features" to the existing pages without changing the product architecture?
✧ Challenge
The original structure cannot be changed due to various factors. To add new features to the existing product structure, it must comply with usability and logic.
Clarify the existing product structure: Currently, records of all categories (e.g.: blood pressure, blood sugar, medication, etc.) are dispersed.
Organize what categories of records are needed for the current condition (diary records + medication records).
Utilize the "folder concept" to consolidate these new and old categories of records in one place.
02 | How should the layout be changed when transitioning the survey from paper to digital devices?
✧ Challenge
There are many questions in the paper manual forms, most of which require additional writing. On a mobile phone, the screen is even smaller, and entering too much text makes it "lazy" for users to fill out the records.
By splitting the questions in the paper questionnaire, we found that the question types can be divided into four categories: "single choice questions," "multiple choice questions," "option questions," and "index questions." We also clarified with the physicians the usage and necessity of collecting records for each question type, and whether it would affect the physicians' judgment of the patient's condition, and adjusted the content accordingly.
Regarding data recording, "filled out," "not needed to fill out," and "forgot to fill out" greatly influence the results. Therefore, we added the reasons for "not needed to fill out" to filter the responses, while also ensuring that users do not have to provide too much information.
In terms of layout, due to the small size of the devices, we ultimately adopted a one-page vertical layout, allowing users to clearly understand how many question types are left to fill out.
03| How can doctors receive the results of data analysis recorded on their phones?
✧ Challenge
This data cannot be transmitted to the doctor in real time either. How can we make the doctor see the data immediately during the consultation?
The team utilized brainstorming methods, but each has its limitations and difficulties:
Patient data system transmitted to the hospital internal system
Due to patient privacy concerns, most systems have strict connection conditions or charging mechanisms, making it difficult for us to connect with other systems.
Let the doctor scan the QR code, and they will be able to see this data analysis report on their device.
Most doctors' feedback is "unnecessary", and they are generally reluctant to use personal devices at work. The hospital also does not provide any scannable machines.
Patients can simply press "Data Analysis" on their mobile phones and show it directly to the doctor.
Adopt the simplest and most direct approach.
Disability Scale
Based on the disability scale questions published by the "Taiwan Headache Society," the design of the interface, layout, and arrangement was created.
01 | Medical purposes, with a fixed frequency of filling out.
✧ Challenge
The diary mentioned above is filled out daily, but the disability scale is filled out once every three months. The challenge encountered here is, what is the timing for this form? Are there any limitations to the engineering team's technology?
The disability scale is "to be filled out every three months," but there is no restriction on it "appearing daily." Thus, from this perspective, there are no major technical restrictions on the project (for example: from which day should we start counting as the first day?). Therefore, it will be set to appear daily, but it is not mandatory to fill it out; the patients can decide the date they wish to fill it out.
✧ The dilemmas encountered in design
Before I joined WaCare, there was no design system.
As a result, the current stage of the product's UI is very chaotic, with many components and fonts being undefined. Organizing design elements and specifications would take a significant amount of time and affect the timeline of this project.
⮕ After discussing this situation with the team and stakeholders, it was decided to focus on the UX process and functionality for now, while keeping the UI to a minimum.
Testing and iteration
Feedback from professional medical personnel
Testing with specialist doctors in traditional Chinese medicine for migraines and the AI center team.
doctor
We are fortunate to visit the migraine doctors and AI center staff at Chung Medical University Hospital, a total of 6 experts together for the test.
This test will examine the functionality of the migraine module light from the perspective of "medical personnel."
Test time and personnel
November 2024, medical personnel, a total of 6 people
Test results
We use the "SUS Usability Scale" for scoring, and the final score is 65 points. (However, since the number of test participants is 6 and the measurement is done from the perspective of "professional medical personnel," it can only serve as a reference.)
During this time, I found that "professional medical personnel" usually have a high level of academic background, especially in an industry that emphasizes "evidence" and "data". What they care most about are the credibility of the data, the completeness of the data, and the significance of the data. As long as these three conditions are met, the product meets their expectations.
Other feedback
Data viewing method: Most doctors indicate that this method is very intuitive and convenient for physicians! They don't even need to do much scanning or take out another device to understand this data.
Frequency of filling out disability scales: Initially, we thought it would be fine to let patients decide when to fill them out, but from a medical perspective, this is actually very inaccurate for recording patient condition. In this testing and interviews, we understood this issue and made corrections accordingly.
patient
Due to the inability to directly access patients, we directly engaged in clinical usage and collected feedback from patients through communication from the hospital.
Harvest and Reflection
Thoughts
Proactively seek assistance
The medical field is a very specialized area, and any related designs made in this context must undergo rigorous review and confirmation; it cannot be accomplished solely based on "common sense." Recognizing this, I proactively suggested that we need individuals with relevant backgrounds to assist, so the company recruited doctoral students in medical fields to help with the project.
Active introduction of testing and iteration
After development is completed, it only requires the action of 'delivery' to the hospital and finishing the project. However, I proactively proposed to conduct a testing and feedback session from the perspective of healthcare personnel, hoping to understand the shortcomings in the design and further optimize the experience.
Understand the business model and integrate design.
At the beginning of the design, we first understood the business model of this feature development from the company's stakeholders, trying to achieve a design balance between the company and the hospital.
Additionally, we extended our thoughts on potential future business models that could be developed (for example: integrating another product of the company, WaPro).
