INTRODUCTION
Merck’s Patient Support Program (PSP) aims to streamline the treatment journey for patients prescribed their medications. Saizen PSP, a program supporting pediatric patients with growth hormone deficiency, faced increasing patient numbers that strained its existing system.
To address this challenge and enhance patient care, we set out to design a Saizen PSP app in 2024 to empower caregivers with accessible healthcare as well as improve the efficiency and quality of their support care for patients.
ROLE
UIUX Designer (worked alongside a Senior UX Designer)
Responsible for research, conceptualisation, design for Minimum Viable Product. (MVP)
THE TEAM
2 UX Designers, 1 Project Manager & 2 Engineers
TIMELINE
April 2024 - July 2024
DESIGNED SAIZEN PSP APP EXPERIENCE
Focus Area
Click on the cards for more details
Understanding Users & Identifying Painpoints
Research Process
Generating & Exploring Possible Solutions
Ideation Phase
Our Designed Solutions
Final Product
Our Research Process 🔍
This app and platform will be used by different personas across varying roles like admin staff, doctors and nurses, caregivers and direct patients themselves.
OUR USERS
Our MVP will focus on delivering timely, high-quality care and support to caregivers, while helping the team to streamline their workflow processes. The project will be divided into two phases: Designing the patient-facing Saizen PSP app and admin & nurse dashboards. Then moving on to development.
Understanding the timeline of the treatment program is crucial for visualizing the workflow and gaining insights into operations, helping us identify opportunities to streamline processes.
TIMELINE FOR SAIZEN PSP
We noticed that repetitive tasks, such as sending reminders and managing replenishment orders through messaging or calls, could be streamlined. By automating these processes, the nurse can free up valuable time and resources to focus on her primary responsibilities, ensuring she can deliver quality medical attention to those in need.
Identifying Saizen PSP team and User’s painpoints for potential solution development.
RESEARCH PROCESS
We invited them to attend our design workshop to gather insights into their challenges and daily workflow, it gave us a diverse & comprehensive perspective as we work on developing the MVP roadmap.
Saizen’s PSP patient count grew to over 400 in 2023, and the numbers are projected to rise to over 500 by the end of 2024.
PAINPOINTS OF THE SAIZEN PSP TEAM
With only 1 dedicated nurse in Singapore, with backup nurses available on days when the primary nurse is unavailable.
The growing number of patients enrolled in the Saizen PSP is causing a strain on nursing resources, compromising the quality of support provided.
🤒 Increasing Patient Load
Nurses juggle a wide range of responsibilities, making it challenging to dedicate sufficient time to each patient. The difficulty in scheduling appointments often leads to nurse burnout.
🐙 Diverse Roles & Responsibilities of the Nurse
With lack of timely support, this prompted patients to redirect their enquiries to clinic nurses and staff, which takes up valuable time and resources, diverting their focus from core responsibilities and potentially compromising patient care.
🆘 Lack of Nurse availability led patients to seek help elsewhere
Due to limited constraints, they are unable to hire additional nursing staff. This further limits PSP from expanding to meet the growing demands.
🪜 Inability to Scale due to Resource Constraints
PAINPOINTS OF CAREGIVERS
Caretakers often faced trouble with how to use the device, troubleshooting, and have several questions about the treatment, but unable to get hold of PSP nurse when they need help, leading to frustrations.
💬 Lack of access to resources and support
Instructions often provided in lengthy PDFs can be challenging for patients to follow. Without accompanying visuals or video demonstrations, patients may struggle to understand the content, leaving them feeling lost and stuck.
👽 Instructions are too wordy and ‘alien’
Caretakers often struggle with administering daily medication, sometimes missing doses. Additionally, they often find it difficult to manage supplies, realizing they need replenishment only when stock is low, leading to urgent requests of help from the Nurse.
💉 Struggle to keep track of dosages and timings
Children often complain about injection pain, making it difficult to maintain their motivation for daily injections without providing incentives or clear goals.
😢 Difficult to stay motivated on treatment
The Saizen PSP team's limited resources are hindering their ability to meet increasing patient demand, leading to internal challenges and external strain, causing a decline in patient support quality.
PROBLEM STATEMENT
01
How might we empower users with accessible resources to provide timely support to address their challenges and create an uncomplicated and pleasant healthcare experience?
02
How might we Optimize Saizen PSP team workflows and resource allocation to support rapid patient growth while delivering personalized and timely support for their patients?
Gaining a deeper understanding of our competitors' apps allows us to gain insights and draw inspiration from the market.
COMPETITOR ANALYSIS
We studied their in-app user flows for processes such as appointment booking, ordering supplies, and chat features. This helped us establish benchmark standards, identify value propositions to consider implementing in our app, and gather UI inspirations.
Ideation Phase 💡
These “How might we” statements prompted us to generate creative ideas and possible solutions.
BRAINSTORMING
We timeboxed the brainstorming activity, limiting 5 mins for each statements, and it helped the team and users to generate a wide varieties of ideas and explorations towards possible opportunities.
Through Brainstorming, we identified promising solutions to meet our different user needs and requirements for the App and Dashboard.
SOLUTIONS
These solutions are prioritized based on user demand, design, and technical complexity, and then translated into MVP features for the app and dashboard designs.
We started creating Lofi wireframes for both the Saizen PSP Mobile app and Team Dashboards.
LOFI WIREFRAMES
Saizen PSP App Experience ✨
OUR SOLUTION
Personalized Healthcare Hub: Track, schedule & Attend consultations
01
Unified Home allows easy navigation of all health resources and services in a single, intuitive dashboard.
Track and get notified of upcoming appointments, replenishment ordering and daily doses reminders.
Schedule appointments effortlessly with just a few clicks. Choose your preferred time and provider, and receive instant confirmations.
Attend consultations from the comfort of home. Connect with healthcare professionals seamlessly through video calls.
Order Supplies, Track delivery status & Resolve issues
02
Order medical replenishments effortlessly and monitor delivery progress and review order history for convenient reference.
Resolve delivery-related concerns, patient can communicate directly with customer support via in-app chat for immediate assistance.
Comprehensive Health Resource, Access Information and Expert Support
03
Access and explore a diverse range of resources covering various health topics, from education to troubleshooting.
Get instant answers with the AI-powered chatbot, providing accurate and helpful responses.
Connect directly with a nurse for personalized assistance when needed. Chat in real-time for advice on managing symptoms, or guidance on next steps.
Track Progress with incentivies
04
Monitor and track patients's growth progress throughout their treatment journey.
Incentivise progress through unlocking tiers of achievements from Bronze to Gold, encouraging consistent progress and motivation throughout their treatment.
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