Background
A major tertiary hospital in the Middle-East region reached out to Healthinnovation Toolbox, as the world was reeling from the COVID-19 outbreak. With service demand at an all-time high, the pandemic necessitated the need for our client to expand their existing health service delivery and provide remote and at-home telehealth offerings. The client was a chain of hospitals and needed us to build a single application to manage their consultations & appointments plus a conversational AI to support the pandemic-related queries. The challenge was to design an entirely new digital ecosystem that stretches its services beyond the hospital walls and a mobile first initiative that brings medical services to patients’ comfort during the pandemic & beyond.
The approach
We collaboratively began with the strategic vision for the remote patient experience and the application design that bridges the gap between the physical and the digital world by creating a hybrid system that balances the patient journey keeping in mind the Covid-19 & post Covid-19 healthcare scenarios for our client. Through deep collaboration, our team led the charge in crafting the strategy & designing an advanced app technology that integrates seamlessly into the client’s existing infrastructure & workflows. The idea was to create great experiences for doctors & patients alike.
3.The business challenge
The legacy systems and the manual processes were a roadblock, the client relied on outdated legacy solutions and antiquated manual processes to connect and engage with their patients before pandemic. They have multiple facilities and different specialty centers which run on decentralized & disconnected platforms. Due to limitations with their existing platform, they were unable to design a digital infrastructure with a unified application. The facilities felt hindered when trying to establish scale or make changes and a centralized solution was the only option. Our team co-created a blueprint and a roadmap to develop a single centralized application that fulfills the requirements of our client.
Moving forward
We conducted an audit of the technology ecosystem at the client's place, alongwith a business analysis and a feasibility study. Findings concluded that the reliance on legacy systems and fragmented technology will be unable to support the client's mobile-first telehealth initiative. The new telehealth application will enable our client to continue their services during lockdowns & pandemic restrictions. A custom solution was created to manage the dynamic data with a CRM integration, the solution streamlined multiple sites into a single app, providing the scale and agility to support clients' patient base. A custom-built react application provides the front-end interface, communicating with an API layer that binds up the relevant services.
The design process
Creating experiences
Patients can now complete online consultation booking or resolve their Covid-19 related queries anytime, anywhere, in a few clicks, compared to the time-consuming process patients are used to with the conventional system. The new application helped the care team to consult patients efficiently, so they can continue to provide quality care to a greater number of patients in a smarter, more effective way during the pandemic. The patient-facing AI assistant automated traditionally human-intensive processes such as scheduling, billing, and managing medical records, answering covid related queries and more...
Result
We are taking a phased approach to digital transformation. Collaboratively, we have launched the prime facets of the application and in the future will systematically evolve the next level of features phase-wise. Our next steps will focus on hyper-personalization and accelerating the digital experience in line with what the new generation of consumers expect from our client beyond the pandemic.
