Workit Health - EHR Redesign
PRODUCT DESIGN · USER EXPERIENCE · RESEARCH
Workit Health is a tele-health provider offering addiction treatment available from home. My team of University of Michigan research students and I were challenged to improve the electronic health record note taking system to improve the quality of care for their patients. Workit Health, a Series C startup with over 100 million dollars in funding, improves the lives of people who struggle with addiction by providing patient-centered, whole-person care that is effective and affordable.
Research, Analysis, Product Design, Stakeholder Presentation, User-Testing
MY ROLE
TIMELINE
8 months
TEAM
4 Designers / Researchers (flex roles)
TOOLS
Figma, Illustrator, Photoshop, Premiere Pro, Miro
OVERVIEW
Problem
Within Workit Health, clinicians, billing team members, and counselors must not only balance their busy schedules every day but coordinate across the company through the notes that they take. Clinicians have to balance their Zoom call window, Google Calendar, other notes, Slack messenger, and Asana across their screens all while trying to give their recovery patients the attention they need.
Goals
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Establish a notes categorization system to ensure that staff members can identify what the notes are intended for and so that there is no inconsistent documentation between staff.
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Develop an integration system within the EHR to coordinate documentation in order to provide interdisciplinary care.
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Improve notes documentation flow following the SOAP (Subjective, Objective, Assessment and Plan) method.
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Design a prototype outlining a solution that is technically feasible, viable for the business, and desirable for the staff that will be using it.
USER RESEARCH
Persona
Our team conducted 8 preliminary interviews with different stakeholders including counselors, clinicians, and billing team members. Each interviewee was asked about their goals, motivations and pain points using the current electronic health record.
From these interviews, we developed three personas that best represented what we heard:
Medical Maverick
Primary
👨🏻⚕️
Newer, younger provider
PAIN POINT
Quickly learns but lacks formal EHR training, leading to concerns about errors. Repetitive work lacks automation, but despite time constraints, Maverick strives for accuracy.
Counseling Karen
Primary
👩🏼💼
Experienced counselor
PAIN POINT
The EHR at Workit differs from her previous experiences. Inexperienced team members don't take notes as she prefers. Despite being stubborn, she valued the autonomy and flexibility of running her own clinic.
Billing Beverly
Secondary
👩🏾💻
General billing member
PAIN POINT
Issues include incorrect claim submissions, legal anxiety, inconsistent workflows due to reliance on too many third-party systems like Waystar, and the need to address member billing escalations.
UX Requirements
Based on our research & personas, we created 4 UX requirements for our design that we must implement going forward. These served as cornerstone essentials for our team, effectively compiling the most prominent user pain points into specific summary points:
🤖
Automation
Automate note taking with predictive text, grammar correction, or buttons to auto-fill and generatively predict words.
🗂️
Organization
Standardize the structure & order of notes so users can expect where to see what information.
⏳
Time Vs. Detail
Design for flexibility of the speediness that clinicians want to write notes versus the necessary details for billing members to read their notes.
📝
Past Notes
Create a way to easily view past notes containing details from previous visits while working on the current note so that nothing gets forgotten.
Competitive & Comparative Analysis
In order to best understand the electronic health record, the team conducted analyses on similar note-taking products. Taking the best from each, the team was able to develop a solution that corresponded to consistency & standards from products with similar use cases.
PROTOTYPE
Sketch
I created sketches outlining how we might be able to redesign the EHR with these UX requirements in mind. Primarily, I focused on redesigning the home page and adding split screen functionality.
My team & I then met to present our sketches to each other. Their contributions are pictured below.
Site Map
Because so much of this project was about redesigning to optimize efficiency, the team and I spent time developing a site map after creating our initial sketches.
Wireframe
After sketching out our ideas and discussing what was best for our redesign, we collaborated on a low-fidelity improved design in Figma. This helped the team to think about the functionality of the product before working on the aesthetics & other high fidelity aspects.
OUTCOME
Final Design
Based on our research, our team created a new EHR design with four primary features:
1. Automation
Our reimagined drop down menu expedites the note taking process for common occurrences to enable doctors to record important information quickly. We reimagined a complicated navigation menu to be much more efficient for our stakeholders.
The automation allows Maverick 👨🏻⚕️ to quickly learn about the best practices for note taking within the EHR while speeding up the repetitive aspects of his work. The more experienced Karen 👩🏼💼 sees consistency across notes, reducing the amount of time she has to spend informing younger colleagues about best practices. Beverly 👩🏾💻 sees that automation reduces inconsistencies, reducing her stress about billing the wrong amounts.
2. Split Screen
View past notes while editing the current note to easily access old information while maintaining focus on patients during a visit. Users can seamlessly reference past notes without completing an extensive login process allowing them to worry less about forgetting the little details.
Maverick 👨🏻⚕️ worries less about getting things wrong as he can reference his old notes and the notes of other team members. Beverly 👩🏾💻sees more consistency from the medical team as they are not forgetting important details from past visits.
3. High Level Patient Data
Grid view of high level data of all notes related to a single patient with added search, filter and sort features. In the past, it was very difficult for users to identify notes quickly, as the details available without clicking into a note were minimal. Now, users can quickly find the notes they need by either glancing on the home page or using the search, filter, or sort options.
Maverick 👨🏻⚕️ and Karen 👩🏼💼 can easily identify their notes on the homepage, allowing them to focus on their patients when in a call.
4. Visual Hierarchy in Note
Completed notes have improved visual hierarchy to increase the clarity of complex medical content. By redesigning the base appearance of the note to emphasize the separation of different sections, users are guided to making cleaner and more organized notes that can be interpreted easier by their team members.
Maverick 👨🏻⚕️ finds it easier to read through the notes as it'r much more similar to how notes are typically formatted. The more experienced Karen 👩🏼💼 appreciates the consistency that the EHR brings in comparison to other EHR products. Beverly 👩🏾💻does not have to worry about missing details, as this new note format is much simpler than it was before.
Impact
To conclude our time with Workit Health, we debriefed our research findings with a UX Specification Report containing a high-level interaction map, interaction flows, and annotated page specifications to pass on to the software development team.
*As we were only involved in part of the wholistic EHR revamp, the conclusive results of our improvements continue to be researched by an in-house team today, however testimonials from our stakeholders are markedly positive.*
RECOGNITION
UMSI Poster Exhibition
As a final submission guideline at the University of Michigan School of Information, all students must submit their year long capstone projects to the Annual Poster Exposition in which a board of judges assess the most successful projects.
My team & I's work with Workit Health was recognized as one of the best projects amongst hundreds of submissions in both the Undergraduate & Graduate schools, being awarded with first place in the Gerald P. Miller Teamwork/Collaboration Award along with a cash prize.
The poster below won First Place in Collaboration & Teamwork at the annual UMSI school-wide exposition.
