Care Transformation Powered by Digital Services

July 5, 2017 / No Comments
TIMELINE
May ~ November 2016 (7 month)
DELIVERABLES
Vision & strategic service recommendations
BRIEF
How will cancer research, healthcare, technology and society change in 10 years, and what is the impact of the changes at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center? Aging society, technology disruptions, consumer-driven markets and breakthroughs in cancer research suggests Memorial Sloan Kettering, an over 100-year old brick and mortal institution, to be more accessible and nimble. Breakthroughs in cancer research allow early detection of disease, and shift cancer as more chronic illness, meaning more and more people will be more engaged with preventive care and/or managing cancer as a condition to live with. As an institution whose focus has been treatment of cancer, how might we leverage digital technology to deliver cancer care outside of our physical boundary, and expand our reach to those who are beyond diagnosis & treatment in their care continuum? How might we develop a flexible and robust foundation of technology that can support evolving organizational needs & dynamics of cancer care? I led the effort to deliver answers to this question with team of designers and technologists at Memorial Sloan Kettering.
TEAM
> Senior UX Designer (Project lead)
    UX Designer
    Project manager
    Visual Designer
    Design Researcher

in collaboration with teams institution wide

Care Transformation Vision

“Be bold.” was the guideline that was give to me when I met José Baselga, chief medical officer at Sloan Kettering with the proposal of digital strategy project. To stay truth to this ask, we focused on the future – where society, medicine and technology are heading to rather than what are current efforts that are happening within the institution. Prevailing consumer technology and artificial intelligence, rising power of consumers, healthcare reform, advancement in cancer research are all pushing cancer care center to think of new ways to deliver cancer care in digital ara, and cancer care will be different experience in 10 years.

2016 MSKCC vision posters

^  As part of the final deliverables,  the team have suggested three digital service concepts that can strategically move MSK from where we are now to where we want to head to in 10 years. Service concepts ware described as future scenario (a story of a patient and her journey) so that the human experience design can lead the development of our future.

 

 

Trend based collective intelligence

We started our discussion with 5 possible future stories that have components of upcoming trends in technology, society and medicine. Through a workshop with colleagues from across the institution, we discussed possibilities, pitfalls and excitement to refine future scenarios.

2016 MSKCC approach

^ Building scenarios based on trends: To foresee more probable and relevant future experience, the team has gathered trends in healthcare, technology and society that are relevant to cancer care and pictured future scenarios; Combine “high demand of oncologists” (healthcare) + “aging population” (society) + “drone” (technology) = what future scenario can you draw?

 

^ Supporting organizational goals: Design team made sure that the scenarios we brought to the workshop maps well with the growth strategy of the institution.

 

 

Additional Research

We have looked at other cancer institutions and their digital tools (patient portals) against the lens of functionalities. In parallel, we have looked at other digital services outside of healthcare to benchmark user experience.

  • How are other hospitals utilizing digital touch points in their care?
  • What are other examples outside of healthcare that engage their customers a way that we aspire?
  • What do we learn from examples in and out of healthcare?

 

2016-MSKCC-Digital-Patient-Care

2016-MSKCC-Digital-Patient-Care

^ Competitive Analysis: Analyzed 6 patient portals (3 top hospital enterprise solutions, 2 cancer care focused solutions and 1 homegrown portal) as well as digital service experience outside of healthcare that materialized and delivered the experience that we desire through our digital patient care.

Additionally, technology team analyzed current technology infrastructure and the gap between current  capability and our desired future.

 

Final Concepts & Recommendations

 

2016-MSKCC-Digital-Patient-Care

^ Strategic services: Analyzing trends, related internal initiatives, our team suggested 3 strategic digital services that can transform patient care at MSK across all patient journey from prevention and wellness period to during cancer treatment to survivorship.

2016-MSKCC-Digital-Patient-Care

2016-MSKCC-Digital-Patient-Care

^ Future scenarios: (Sample) Digital service can connect disconnected parties through digital and provide values for every connected party. The scenarios were put together to juxtaposed experience and benefits of patients and the institution, along with evidence (trends, related projects), capabilities to build, return on experience and challenges.

PROCESS
  • Workshop (vision, ideation) – competitive analysis – SME interviews – Analysis & concepts – Final deliverable

ROLE

  • led the project from planning to delivering final report

CHALLENGE

  • learning complex hospital system in a short period of time

RESULT

  • The final suggestions were well received by senior management at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
  • Two of the three suggested services are being developed into new capabilities and offerings at the institution.

Digital Playbook for Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center

May 23, 2017 / No Comments
TIMELINE
May 2016 ~ November 2016
DELIVERABLES
Digital Playbook
BRIEF

How do we embrace digital technology to amplify our reach beyond our patient care in most efficient and impactful ways? What makes digital services successful at Memorial Sloan Kettering, and other industries? Taking best practices from both internally and externally, we have created playbook to guide creators, stakeholders and project sponsors within the institution to make informed decisions when they are embarking on a journey of creating digital services.

TEAM
Lead Designer

Why playbook?

There are many teams building digital tools and systems for patients as well as staff members. This guiding principles are made so that all those efforts are set up for success, and working towards greater vision of digital patient care.

How it’s made

This playbook is crafted based on two things; One is the collective voices of people within the institution – the vision, challenges that they have experienced over the past decade, and what could have worked better considering the unique environment at MSK. The other is the best practices of digital services that offer great user experience and systemic lift leveraging digital technology in various industries. Interviews with 18 internal creators, end-users of systems and leaders internally, and books and articles that are well respected in digital technology field have been the ingredients of this playbook.

 

Play rules!

The roadshow & impact

We took the materials to marketing, engineering, strategists and other builders to share the words so that they can start utilizing our learnings. How-tos and specific resources are added to make it more concrete. We have seen it being used in people’s thinking in projects (engineer’s are referring to this “remember to think how this data is being used in clinic!” during patient portal dev meeting)

 

Care Coordination Research

November 30, 2016 / No Comments
TIMELINE
October ~ November 2016 (2 month)
DELIVERABLES
Research Synthesis: Opportunities
BRIEF

Cancer care is an art of orchestration. It requires collaborative efforts by physicians, nurses, office assistants, researchers as well as patients and their caregivers. Ironically, Design Innovation Group has been building empathy around patients and caregivers throughout years of work at Memorial Sloan Kettering, but was relatively lacking knowledge around inside of the door of our clinics. As service design lay its lens at not only to customer experience (patients in this case) but also the front stage and back stage, we needed a deep knowledge around people who are providing care and their coordination efforts. How do highly specialized individuals work together towards shared goals, and operationalize their intentions in clinic settings?

TEAM
> Senior Designer (Project lead)
    Design researcher
    UX designer
    Visual Designer

Planning Research Objectives

  • Learn the workflow, attitudes & behaviors of clinicians and operations staff around communication, coordination and documentation.
  • Understand the needs and objectives of clinical teams in communicating amongst themselves and with patients.
  • Understand the landscape of tools (digital and non-digital) that clinician teams currently use to communicate with patients and with each other.
  • Map information flows and see where information lives, including tacit knowledge that is unrecorded.
  • Identify opportunities and ideas that could address needs and objectives, especially in line with strategic goals such as exploring virtual care

Field Research

We used research methodologies that can help us deep dive into the action of care coordination: observation (shadowing & contextual inquiries), interview with subject matter experts as well as people in the field.

For clinic observations, a team of designers visited 3 clinics. We interviewed clinic staff members including both clinical and non-clinical staff before or after the clinic day. When the clinic was running, we spread ourselves into multiple locations of a clinic (waiting area, staff desks, exam room) to be able to cross check what has been happening in multiple locations at a time of an event.

^  Our collective notes, artifacts, and photos were gathered in the project room for sense-making. What is a common theme and what opportunities can we find?

 

Making Sense of What We Learned


^ Synthesizing our learnings: We have documented roles, tools and workflows around care coordination based on what we were told, observed and collected to have shared understanding within the department of design innovation

 

Moving forward

^ Opportunity areas: The research ended with suggesting opportunity spaces based on clinic staff members’ behaviors, intentions and desires as well as from a systems perspective. Where can we make an greater impact to support clinical operations?

PROCESS
  • Planning & Recruiting – Field research (observations in clinics and physician offices, and interviews)  – Synthesis

ROLE

  • led the project from planning to delivering final report

CHALLENGE

  • Translating our learnings of the subject’s complex nature into feasible opportunities

RESULT

  • Influenced development and deployment of care coordination tools at MSKCC
  • Internally in the design group, opened to a new possibility of service design approach when service is provided by human beings with high degree of expertise, goals and emotions

Cancer Patient Journey Map

May 21, 2016 / No Comments
TIMELINE
February ~ May (4 month)
DELIVERABLES
Patient journey map

BRIEF

Build a base of shared understanding of cancer patients journey to be used as a foundation of building empathy and finding opportunities.

TEAM
> Senior UX Designer
    UX Designer

Patient Journey Map

A customer journey map is a graphical narrative that describes a series of events, behavior and emotional status of customers who are interacting with a service. It is often used as a tool to look at a product or a service from customer’s perspective. It visualizes customer’s actions from start to finish, it’s often a great tool to surface blind spots and find opportunities.

This particular document is created in collaboration with a dozen designers at Design Innovation Group, who have been emerged in primary research for years of projects. It was a beginning of documenting our collective knowledge to be used for future reference and a design tool.

 

Details

  • Illustrations to help picturing patient situations
  • Covering thoughts & emotional states, actions, and social dynamics
  • Based on interviews, observations with patients and caregivers

How we used it

The final journey map was shared by a team of designers at Design Innovation Group and utilized for many other projects. Some took it to map internal digital projects within the institution, so that we can see where the institution is falling short when considering the whole patient journey. Some took it to brainstorm on opportunity areas. It was also used as a learning tool for new hires to build a basic understanding of what patients go through.

PROCESS
  • Workshop – document

ROLE

  • initiated and led the project

RESULT

  • Used as a tool to look at our offerings from a patient’s perspective