Case study — Public hospitals

In the first week of the UX/UI bootcamp, we were given a group challenge. The first instruction was to pick a wicked problem from a list to resolve. Considering that some people in the group already could relate to the already existing needs in the health field, it was relatively easy choosing the topic to work on. So we were challenged to approach the following statement as a wicked problem:
“How Might We transform the end-to-end experience in public hospitals?”Empathize
User Research
As we prepared to go out to interview our users, we had some initial assumptions about want we thought we would hear. The questions we asked were basically about the existing service and if people were satisfied with the current situation. We expected to hear that people were fed up with the public health service. To our surprise, we discovered that people were generally happy about the current community health care service. However, we questioned this fact as some interviews were conducted in a waiting room with many people around.
… “I can’t complain. I’m satisfied”
The context could have weakened the credibility of the study as there were other teammates in different contexts with contrary opinions. That being said, we persisted in finding new and more concise information about the system. We managed to then contact two doctors and both were appalled with the system as they were overworked attending too many patients throughout the day.
… “The system is *!#@”
We decided to contact the existing help line “Saude 24”, which is another available service created to help patients with their health issues. We got through to the administrative office to clarify and better understand the services that are available to the public. We were informed that “Saúde 24” assists the general public in a number of ways:
- They can book a consultation with a family doctor.
- Set-up a family planning appointment.
- in the case of children, they can also arrange to meet up with the local paediatrician.
- People with a minor health problem can phone in to obtain information about their present situation.
- If the situation requires a visitation to the emergency hospital, the hotline can assist the ill with triage by phone, and send them off quickly to a hospital.
- For more extreme situations, in case of a serious road accident, they can redirect the call to the “112” hotline; a central command station connected to all hospitals, police and fire brigades and with the power to despatch emergency resources for any situation.
Survey (google forms)
We were very surprised at what was available to the public through these hotlines and so to further our research we sent out a survey, with the help of a lean survey canvas, about “saúde 24”, so that we could collect quantitative information about the public’s knowledge and use of this hotline. We wanted to know what people thought about it and how were they accessing the platform?
Once we received our answers, we were dumbfounded as we processed the data… Practically 80% of the 60 people who responded, clearly admitted that they knew about the hotline, but then 52,1% of our audience only used it once or twice in a year and 37,5% would never even use it!
It was puzzling to see how the help line was so ignored. This was certainly something for us to look into and help us with solving the pain points ahead.
Define
Persona
To better understand our audience, we used the Affinity Diagram to cluster the content we had about the users into similar topics to become more concise about what needed more attention and prioritise the categories. Our main cluster was knowledge, but we also had alternative suggestions, frustrations/emotions and also pain points.
For our Persona, we used the empathy map to understand what our user could be thinking and to assist us at arriving at the best possible option, which was a Portuguese persona, Marta; a middle-aged single mom of 2 small kids. She works as a real estate agent and has a pretty hectic life trying to manage all her responsibilities.
Once defined, we went onto create a user journey to find her pain points as she finds her way to a doctor to receive the medical care she needs.
Ideate
At this stage we defined our “How Might We” statement and were clear about what we wanted to solve.
“How Might We help Marta receive the necessary treatment she needs without going to the hospital?”In class, we had a round robin challenge to create solutions for a problem and this turned out to be very useful because when applied to our own project, we came up with new ideas that we incorporated into the original idea we had for our solution.
Concept testing
To test our idea, we drew up our storyboards for A/B concept testing and went outside to test our models. We showed 3 distinct paths for our process and it was clear that people preferred certain steps to arrive at the final stage which was getting better.
Concept testing
- Step 1
The triage stage was the common step to filter the patients needs to the required solution.
- Step 2
This step was a combination of 2 preferred variations of the process. For one, the patient with a mild health condition wouldn’t have to leave their home and could receive a doctor’s diagnosis by phone and follow the necessary recommendations at home. The alternative would be the doctor visiting the patient’s home to diagnose and prescribe the drugs he would need.
- Step3
The pharmacy service was something that was thought about late in the final stages of the project process and actually was only devised once we did the round robin. This step was one that our interviewees really enjoyed considering, and thought that it would be really useful. The Idea would be that the patient would receive his medicine at home, delivered by a driver working with the Pharmacies specifically designated for this service. However, I should also add that this service would have a cost so as to cover the expenses that the state would be providing for the community.
Our Solution
So after analysing the data through A/B testing we arrived at a holistic solution that would take the ill from being sick to getting better without leaving home.
Step 1(free) and step 3(paid) would be implemented in all situations. However in step 2, we broke it down into 2 options depending on how serious the condition the sick person was in.
Option 1 (step 2)
In the case of a mild health condition, the sick patient would call the helpline service to obtain information about his condition. The doctor’s advice by phone (free public service) would be enough for the user to follow and treat himself, and if medication were required, the doctor would request the treatment directly from the pharmacy that would then dispatch a team to send the drugs to the patient’s home (paid public service).
Option 2 (step 2)
In this variation, the caller would also be filtered by phone (triage), but this time, the sick person, due to his more serious condition, would be required to receive a doctor at home. The user would have to pay for the service before receiving a visitation from a mobile team of junior doctors which would be always available for this type of service and automatically dispatched to solve these issues. Once again, if medication should be necessary, the doctor’s prescription would be digitally sent to the nearest Pharmacy which would then send a driver to deliver the remedies home(paid service).
Conclusions and next steps
At the end we were all satisfied with the outcome of our final solution, even though it was similar to an already existing model. It’s just that we thought that the available solution wasn’t very effective, even though it has a lot of potential, and we all concluded that if we could just upgrade this platform, we could make this more effective to cater for a larger community.
The next steps would definitely be promoting the help line in a more practical way to communicate successfully to people which are all the available services so that people could clearly understand what can be done if they use this platform.