Kaiser Permanente
Founded in 1945, Kaiser Permanente is one of the nation’s largest not-for-profit health plans, serving 11.8 million members with health insurance, medical facilities, and physicians. For this project, KP wanted to expand their applications to include wellness platforms assisting those with chronic and episodic health conditions.
Project
Total Health Tablet App
Role
User Experience Architect
Objectives
- Increase engagement with members
- Proactively identifying potential issues to help reduce costs
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Approach
To explore and achieve digital total health themes, such as management of a chronic condition like Type II Diabetes or guiding/assisting members through an episodic condition like pregnancy, or simply helping members stay healthy, I created:
- Personas
- Storyboarding
- Use case feature sets
- Interaction design wireframes
- Paper and clickable Prototypes
Challenges & Lessons
- Encouraging member users to use social media for sharing
- Designing for educational elements that were both useful and quickly digested
Getting to know real user health stories was both challenging and educational. This project became even more significant and personal to me and my team.
For Eric, my work:
- Helped him track his glucose readings over time
- Identified a potentially dangerous medical situation
- Avoided that dangerous situation in a very convenient way (and didn’t require him to visit a KP facility!)
- Made tracking his use of a new medication simple and easy
- Gave him useful tips for his diet and exercise routines
For Patricia, my work:
- Helped her stay educated on the pregnancy and what to expect
- Connected her with other expecting moms in the area for support
- Allowed her to share sonograms and other information with her family from the app
- Allowed her to more conveniently manage her high-risk pregnancy via video appointments
- Let her track and monitor her weight carefully and in an integrated fashion
Impact
- Improved member experience and convenience (higher member satisfaction)
- Reduced costs through virtual pregnancy coordination sessions (not in KP facility)
- Improved chances of healthy new members (babies!) through patient education
- Improved member health through diet & exercise
- Costly ER visit and costly follow-ups were avoided more often
- Made scheduling appointments more convenient and efficient for physicians
- Stories shared on Facebook/Twitter/etc. enhanced the KP brand in the marketplace
