Digital Emergency Care
CHATBOT & TELEMEDICINE SOLUTION
Digital emergency care with a chatbot that performed a medical triage, a videocall tool and an administration module.
ROLE
Research, Design System, Conversational, Healthtech, Product Design
DATE
2023
TOOLS
figma, miro, maze
DESIGN CHALLENGE
During the pandemic, emergency visits dropped by 77% — many of which were likely low-risk cases, as 80% of patients are typically classified this way. This raised a key question: How can we safely prevent emergency centers from becoming overcrowded again? A digital channel for non-critical cases could be the answer.
DELIVERABLES
hi-fi prototype, design system, UX Research, Usability Testing
UX DESIGN / UI DESIGN / RESEARCH / UX WRITING
context
During the pandemic, emergency visits dropped by 77%, largely due to patients’ fear of contamination. Considering that 80% of cases are classified as low risk, many of these visits could have been handled outside traditional emergency centers. This revealed an opportunity to create a digital channel to manage non-critical cases and help prevent overcrowding in the future.
80%
of the people showing up at the emergencies are categorized as low risk
How can we safely help prevent the emergency centers from being overcrowded after the pandemic?
Solution
An integrated digital emergency care platform featuring a decision-tree based chatbot for medical triage, a secure video consultation tool for real-time doctor-patient interaction, and an administration module to manage patient flow and data efficiently. This system allows low-risk patients to receive timely care remotely, reducing unnecessary visits to emergency centers and enhancing the experience for patients, doctors, and administrators.
low risk
patient
chatbot triage
high risk
The service consisted of 3 main areas:
1. Chatbot - a virtual assistant that would perform a medical screening and define if the patient's case is high risk or low risk.
2. Doctor's area - where the doctor could see the line of patients waiting for an online meeting, visualize their information and answer the calls.
3. Administrative area - reports and other features to manage healthcare companies, patients and doctors.
data
When I joined the project, I collected the information on the development of the product up to that moment:
-
The chatbot had already reached a safety percentage for the triages.
-
The chatbot could improve the quality of the triages
95%
Accuracy to human triage
1557
patients tested
104
flows
in total
We started with a CSD matrix that stated our certainties, suppositions and doubts.
qualitative research
After our chatbot triage system started reaching 95% accuracy compared with human triages, we decided to collect qualitative data to dig deeper in the experience.
We had 4 interviews conducted by our UX researcher. I've reviewed the recordings to get insights and later discussed them with the team.
personas
As an emergency service for health insurance companies, PAD had a large range of potential users that vary a lot in demographic information. Based on the data collected, 5 different personas were identified in order to better understand our users and their needs.
Alana, 34
Mother of a 1 year-old
Unimax plan
Global/Business
Lives in Porto Alegre
Marcela, 32
Unimax plan
Global/Business
Lives in Porto Alegre
Breno, 18
Gen Z
Unimax plan
Global/Business
Lives in Canoas
Fábio, 35
Gen Z
Unifácil plan
Outpatient/Business
Lives in Gravataí
Jussara, 72
Unipart plan
Global/Family
Lives in Porto Alegre
Design System
The system was structured to be used by different healthcare providers under a white-label model. After defining the foundations of the system, we've designed and developed basic components for the chatbot and screens that would display the behavior of the chat.
Solution
For doctors
Doctor's area includes a waiting line, patients information screen and the video area. Here are some of the screens:
takeaways
Working within the healthcare area made me aware of the complexity of making this kind of technology accessible for widely different people. The variety of personas (patients, doctors, administrators) and stakeholders was a great challenge, but also strenghtened my research and communication skills.
The agile startup environment was an amazing learning and made possible the quick development and release of the product. This also required a faster-paced ux process, so we could keep improving the product as we tirelessly tested with our user and collected feedback.
Our release was successful and the product is online for 2 healthcare companies and being used by dozens of doctors and thousands of patients to this day.