EnableHealth: pilot’s wrapped, so what next?

In August 2013, HUB Ottawa hosted Alex Munter, President of Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario (CHEO), for an intimate discussion on healthcare innovation.

There were a number of interesting individuals in the audience, and a few of us loitered around HUB after the event to compare notes. This is when I met Shane Maley, an Ottawa-based Physiotherapist, who was in the early stages of scoping out an app that would let him better communicate with his patients outside of clinic visits.

I’m fascinated by healthcare innovation, which was the primary reason why I attended the event, but I also needed a push to take some concrete steps on a percolating idea: for years I’d been listening to my medical student friends tell stories about the best and worst practices observed while in the field — a portal that aggregated and harvested that collective knowledge could flag areas in our healthcare system ripe for creative interventions…

Shane and I had both been sitting on our ideas for a number of years, the major obstacle being a lack of understanding on how to build and test digital tools. As we got to talking about our common challenge, we realized that we were not alone, that there were likely many latent healthcare innovators stuck in neutral due to their lack of digital literacy. We also realized that we were well placed to do something about it.

Fast forward two years: Shane and I have wrapped up our pilot of EnableHealth.

With the help of advisors with deep expertise in user experience design, app development, and product design we built then tested a peer and mentor driven process that allows individuals to quickly prototype and validate a digital product.

A review of the pilot’s outcomes showed that EnableHealth has unlocked valuable insights that can be grouped into three buckets:

Process Delivery: It’s possible to have a self-guided workshop series using light mentorship & group facilitation, which still tangibly advances digital solutions in a short period of time — there is a middle ground between handholding and self-learning.

Project Advancement: A functioning app isn’t required for validation, but a package of detailed app specifications informed by user testing can be a valuable reference/baseline when engaging a vendor. If the project is “no go,” this Exit Package helps you refresh your learnings after you’ve ditch the project.

Digital literacy: Most people really don’t know how much work is required and how much it costs to actually build something good — there is a big digital literacy gap, which this process closes.

“I saw participant’s language change over the course of the program.”

- EnableHealth Mentor

“Process forced me to really test the viability of this app, which I could have easily sat on for another year.”

- EnableHealth Participant

Next steps…

Now that we’ve consolidated our major process delivery, session content, and digital product development insights we’re engaging individuals, institutions, and communities of practice to determine what an ideal toolkit would look like to help us share this social R&D.

Stay tuned.

Jason is a biomedical engineer who hails from a family of healthcare providers. He co-founded Impact HUB Ottawa, and works in the Federal Government. See previous posts from our journey: Ottawa Digital Health Group, Building an Enabler )