Envisioning the future of healthcare

How do you align on a new business model?

As part of EMIS Health, Patient provides an electronic patient record system to most of the UK’s medical practices, enabling patients to book GP appointments and order repeat prescriptions via their Patient Access website. Meanwhile Patient.info competes with the likes of WebMD and the NHS in providing free online medical information to the public.

Spending time with the CEO and his core team we began by mapping out both the current and the future business model, articulating the value proposition, and understanding the brand.

As an information and community site, Patient.info earns revenue from display advertising. Most users of the site are members of the public seeking information and reassurance on medical conditions or their symptoms. Patient wanted to partner with service providers who could help these users take the next step in getting help and support regarding their medical queries, such as online consultations with medical professionals, referring users to specialists, or connecting to local pharmacies that provide access to medication and prescription management. The website would no longer be a simple information source, but a platform as part of the design of a much bigger service and integrated healthcare system.

An important first stage of the project was bringing together a cross-disciplinary team to achieve a shared understanding and alignment on the new “Symptom, Diagnosis, Remedy” model. In a series of collaborative workshops we translated the CEO’s plan into a system map and service architecture that encapsulated this new business model.

How do you communicate a compelling story?

Once there was a shared understanding within the team of the ambition, the challenges at hand, and the transformation required to make this new future a reality, we began to assemble the various elements required for the presentation to the board. Our aim was to communicate a compelling story that would communicate the breadth of key content and supporting materials in a more engaging way than a conventional slide deck of dry words and numbers. We needed something more enticing to portray the excitement of the vision and unlock any investment. How could we demonstrate the improvement these changes would make to people’s lives?

We settled on the idea of a short series of ‘Day in the life’ video stories documenting the perspectives of three different scenarios of users seamlessly interacting with a suite of interconnected digital and physical services. We defined three users with different lifestyles, health needs, and goals that would amply demonstrate the new Patient platform and how it would fit smoothly into their daily lives.

In a short time frame we collaborated with a video production partner to storyboard, direct and shoot these videos. After the main narrative beats were mapped out, we collaborated on translating initial ideas into workable storyboards. We then explored location options, camera angles, and an approximate shooting schedule. After we’d scouted suitable actors, the Director of Photography came back to us with a detailed shot list, including notes on equipment, locations, and detailed scene descriptions.

After mapping out the key aspects of the new business model and value proposition we knew we’d need a rich, energetic way to communicate the vision to the board. Between floating the video idea and receiving the final cuts, there was an incredible whirlwind of activity. Our confidence in our partners allowed us to fully commit to what was quite an unusual approach for Clearleft, and a strategy that helped our client achieve their goal.

Cementing new ideas in bigger system thinking

The main purpose of these videos was to bring a new user experience to life. We wanted to express a human-centred story that demonstrated frictionless interactions with the new platform.

To help us express the new vision we created a collection of digital and physical assets to demonstrate compelling new features including touch payments, notifications, location tracking maps, watch integrations, fitness tracking, a chatbot, appointment booking, video call appointments, prescription management, and medication delivery.

We also used a simple proposition statement exercise to help redefine the brand identity and its relationship to the bigger system thinking and service design that would soon exist. This allowed us to agree a visual identity direction to inform both the prototypes that would feature in our videos, as well as a larger redesign piece that would follow in a future phase of work. In order to show people interacting believably with a system that didn’t actually exist, we designed just enough UI to support each video’s narrative.

We created a prototype to work in-device which we could capture live on camera, rather than in post-production, as well as animated interactions we could overlay on the video to show the viewer what our users were seeing and doing.