Design an application launching in the US marketplace that enables patients to find doctors.

Approach

1. Understand the prompt better and establish the business goal with the interviewer

2. Define user segments and select one

3. List user pain points

4. Identify solution for user pain points

5. Make prioritization decision

Clarification questions

Candidate: Are we designing the app in only english or multiple langugaes

Interviewer: English

Candidate: Is this app part of the facebook or standalone

Interviewer: Standalone

Candidate: How is the app monetized ads or sub fee

Interviewer: Ads

Business goal: I assume that goal here is to connect the patients with doctors to ensure that patients get the care that they need

User segments:

A) Doctors/Care provider

B) Patients

C) Care takers (Parents/Guardians for kids, Adults for senior citizens)

D) Insurance provider

I would prioritize the biggest user group to drive the most impact, hence I would prioritize the patients

Mapping out the user journey

A) Patient feel ill

B) Patient goes to the app

C) Identify that doctors that are in-network and out-of-network

D) Select the doctors

E) Schedule the appointment

F) Receives the care and pays the bill

G) Receives the medicines and pays the bill

H) Reviews the care

User pain points

A) Unable to find the doctors that are in vicinity and ranked by their track record in terms of customer reviews

B) Unable to get the opinions about the doctors from friends/aquitance directly

C) Difficulty to connect with the doctor office and long wait time to see the doctor

D) Long wait time to receive the prescription

E) Unable to share the feedback about the care to help their community

Solution:

A) Use the patients location to suggest the doctors that are available in the neighborhood and their ratings

Cost: Moderate, use gps technology to make nearby doctor recommendation

Impact: high, patients can find the reliable doctors in the neighorhood easily

B) Integrate the app with facebook and suggest the friends that have received the treatment from the doctors in the past to get their opinions. It helps patients to get opinion of the people that they trust about the quality of care

Cost: High, need to build the app to interface with the app

Impact: High, word of mouth will help to create trust

C) Chat option with the app to connect with the doctor's office desk and give the option to patients to maket the case to acquire the appointment sooner rather than later

Cost: Low, create the communication capability within the app by leveraging the existing messenger feature

Impact: High, reduce the barrier to reach out to the doctor office

D) Facebook will partner pharmacies thereby facebook can help to patients to order the Precription on the app and get delivered to their doorstep automatically

Cost: High, need to buid the technology, partnership with pharmacies, and build out the operations capabilities

Impact: High,

E) Patients can share their feedback about the care on the app itself.

Cost: Low, can easily build the feeback systems for patients to use

Impact: high, it incentives the doctors to provide a quality care

Prioritization

If i were to prioritize one feature, I would select the one that has the maximum potential in terms of its ability to create an impact for the patients and the one where facebook is uniquely positioned to create that value. So I would choose the feature that allows from friend/aquitance who previously received the care from the doctor. It will go long away to help the patients to select the right care provider.

Succes metrics

A) Adoption #patients #doctors registered on the app

B) Activation #patients #doctors onboarded and setting an appointment

C) Engagement #cares provided

D) Retention #repeat patients

E) Revenue: ad rev generated

Goal: Improving User Experience in Discovery of required Docor

User Persona:

1. Student staying away from Parents

2. Single professional workers

3. Mother in a Family

4. Old Age people

User Pain Points:

1. Dont have time to find doctors online

2. Dont have any reference from Any friends or relative

3. Insurance Coverered or not?

4. Accepts New Patients or not?

5. Available nearby or not

6. Need Regular or Specialist?

7. Trust doctor or not? Reviews?

Prioritizing:

#2, #5, #7.

 

List Solution:

6. Recommend Doctor based on Patient profile(1st time user account created) with nearest doctor 1st

7. Siri and Google voice to be integration to show recommendation based on Insurance card in digital Wallet.

8. Image recognistion on wounds or symptom to tell which specialist it needs to be

9. Connect with fitness devices to get Heart Rate, Ox rate, ECG to recommend a doctor and send your details automatically on user confirmation.

1. Integrate Hospital websites to find doctor's list

2.Crawl Hopstial websites to get information on Doctors

3.Launch Services for Doctors so that can register

4.Connect with FB, Insta so that you can see referral from Frinds etc(Risk: Invading privacy)

 

Prioritize Solution:

1.Recommend Doctor based on Patient profile(1st time user account created) with nearest doctor 1st.

2. Image recognistion on wounds or symptom to tell which specialist it needs to be

3.Connect with fitness devices to get Heart Rate, Ox rate, ECG to recommend a doctor and send your details automatically on user confirmation.

Metrics:

1. # of searches - DAU/MAU

2.CTR

3. Scroll Depth (Better recommendation)

4.NPS

Summarize...

Clarifications:

Can I assume this is an app on Facebook and not a separate mobile app?

I would assume that this feature is for users to find and research doctors and health care providers. It will be safe to assume that this app will be for non-emergency medical needs.

I will also assume that we are building this feature to drive Facebook's engagement goals forward. The success measure primarily will come from both sides, people seeking referrals and people offering referrals.

CUSTOMER:

- Family moves to a new area an looking for a family physician

- A couple is expecting and is looking for pediatrician recommendations

- User has a question around a non-emergency or non urgent cosmestic health topic and wants to consult a doctor either online or physically

Let me focus on family that has moved to a new area:

 

NEEDS / PAIN POINTS:

DISCOVERY:

- We would like to find a good family doctor in our new city

- Would like some tools to search for doctors with specific skills

- Would like to research doctors profiles and check feedback

ACCESS

- Would like to know the details of the doctor and find out if this doctor is accepting new patients

- If accepting new patients, would like to make a quick appointment with a doctor

MANAGE

- would like to chat with the doctors assistant or the doctor so I can ask som clarifying questions

APP FEATURES

	Satisfaction	Effort
- a custom search that will allow me to enter what kind of a doctor I am looking for Search results will be personalized based on people like me and the doctors that they have liked or reviewed	H	L
- Invite Doctors and Clinics to create Doctors Pages as Health Care Provider. Create a button called "Recommend" and allow recommendaation scale and a quick blurb about the doctor (that other users can read)	H	L
- Like or Save For Later a Doctors profile so I can shortlist a list of doctors and create a poll for my friends in the new city to vote on	H	L
- Doctors Page lists all the info for research. Create a button to send a message (with FB messenger integration) to the Health Care Provider team	H	M
- Book Appointment button from the Doctors Page	M	M

 

Trade-offs and Risks:

For this to work well, I think the first step would be to invite Doctors and their teams to create pages for the Health Care Provider. The pages could belong to Hospitals or Clinics and will have subpages which are profiles for individual doctors.

If we have pages setup, we can start with a MVP feature of Search which will show users the doctors based on their preferences and based on the choices made by their friends and people similar to the user.

SUCCESS MEASURE:

Success for this feature will have to be measured in how many pages are created for Doctors from the providers side. Number of searches for doctors and number of saves or book appointment interactions will be a good metric from the user side.

Candidate: Most major hospitals already offer their own websites with a decent find-a-doctor feature. It would be good to know what this app would do, that those hospital apps don’t already do.

Interviewer: We want this app to be an enabler for private practice clinics to get more reach online, and provide patients with a wider selection of affordable doctors to choose from. 

Candidate: Is it safe to assume that medicare costs at clinics for basic medical needs are more affordable than at hospitals?

Interviewer: Yes, we can go with that assumption for this case.

Candidate: What kind of patients are we targeting? Is there a specific demographic or medical need the app specialises in? Can I use the working class demographic and people who might not be able to afford Medicare expenses as well?

Interviewer: That should be fine.

Candidate: Thanks, for the sake of time and simplicity I will go with general physicians, rather than a specific specialty of medicine, for the initial version of the app. Is that OK?

Interviewer: Yes, go ahead.

Candidate:

I  would conduct a patient survey to identify the core needs of a patient looking for a new doctor, here are a few examples of what patients hypothetically might have said.

Customer comments	Customer benefit
I want to quickly search for a doctor without entering my zip code and other details	Save time with search activity
I don’t know which doctors accept my insurance type and sometimes I end up paying more out of pocket due to lack of information	Reduce uncertainty of financial coverage and mitigate billing surprises
I want to know who the doctor is and what other patients have to say about their experience with the clinic	Increase confidence in going for a consult
I don't have health insurance and can't afford medical care at the hospital, I wish I knew how to get a consult without paying the full fees	Reduce uncertainty of financial coverage and mitigate billing surprises
I have a mobility disability and find it challenging to commute to the doctor for my regular doctor check-ups. I wish I could remotely get a consult	Get remote access to medicare
My existing doctor’s office only takes appointments by phone and I don’t have time to wait on hold to make simple requests like book an appointment or request to reschedule an appointment	Save time scheduling an appointment
Google search shows that my symptoms might be cancer, I don't know whether I need to see a specialist	Reduce anxiety for people who self-diagnosis

 

There is a lot of technicality with healthcare billing and legislation in the US, it is also costly and tied closely with insurance. What kind of constraints do we have to consider here?

Interviewer: Yes, I agree. Let's not take constraints into consideration and just move along with the solution.

Candidate: OK cool. I would focus on the barrier to entry with regard to the financial impact of a doctor visit, to simplify the experience of selecting the right doctor for this target group. This helps clinics save time in admin work and makes it easier for patients to choose the right healthcare provider that suits their budget. 

I also feel like Google search does a good job of putting out search results with all the relevant info, so the app needs to have a differentiated value proposition. I also think that the urgency level can’t be considered as it acts as a constraint.

Need description: As a user, I want to find a doctor my insurance or budget can cover and allows communicating with the doctor without being physically present at the clinic so that I have more flexibility with my healthcare options.

 

SOLUTION space

List of ideas	Must Have	Should Have	Nice to Have	Won't Have
Display doctor’s bio, specialty, credentials and office location and office hours	Yes
Accepting new patients or not		Yes
Allows online consultation with nurse or first level triage for a new patient		Yes
Search doctors by city or/and zip code	Yes
Search doctors by specialty				Yes
Search doctors by insurance plans	Yes
Search feature within a certain miles radius
Filter results by doctor’s gender			Yes
Filter by book online service				Yes
Allows existing patients to send and receive msgs with their doctor’s team			Yes
Allows user to clicks picture of insurance card or allows user to enter insurance details, processes the details to match the healthcare providers that accept the user’s insurance (assuming this is legal to do)			Yes
Crowd source patient reviews for billing, ease of scheduling, disability access (say, a Yelp for clinics)		Yes
Smart diagnosis survey allows user to select symptoms and narrow down on the problem area, which will help better match with doctors who have more experience or associated with hat specialty as well	Yes

 

Prioritization - 1 to 5 (One being the lowest score)

 

List of shortlisted ideas	Patient reach	Value add	Total
Display doctor’s bio, specialty, credentials and office location and office hours	4	3	7
Search doctors by city or/and zip code	5	3	8
Search doctors by insurance plans	4	4	8
Allows online consultation with nurse or first level triage for a new patient	4	5	9
Smart diagnosis app	4	5	9

 

Feature Clarification:

• Would this be a Mobile app or a desktop app? Ans: Mobile Application
• Would the Patient Master data be available form a Legacy system? Ans: Yes, some data is available, but the user would also need to enter the details
• Does the Billing and Payment need to be automated after finding the doctor? Ans: No Patients needs to find the doctors only.
• Should the Patients be able to rate doctors? Ans: Yes
• Do we need to have different types of users who access this application? Yes, there should be different categories like Premium, Elite, Regular Users.
• Can we assume that patients would like to rate the doctors based on their experience and this rating is visible to other users? Yes

User story

We need to build a Mobile application where the user should see the list of Doctors based on the geographical area in USA. The user would enter the Sickness symptoms and based on this information a doctor with expertise would be suggested. Patients will also maintain the history of illness and doctor can access this information securely and interact with the patients.
 

Once the Patient visits a doctor, he/she can rate the doctor based on their experience and this review is then submitted to an Admin who approves or rejects the reviews.

Backlogs

1. Ability for User persona Patient and Admin to login and access the application. The Patient users get the features based on their “type” of the user. E.g. Premium User, Elite User, Regular User.
2. User Patients will enter the sickness symptoms, want to see a list or Map View of Doctors based on the area.
3. User Patients can also choose Doctors based on the doctor’s expertise.
4. The Doctors are shown by default in the order of relevance, the user can then sort the list using rating, distance, cost etc.
5. User Patients can book appointments for the Doctors based on the availability calendar.
6. User Patients then get a notification and calendar block for their confirmed appointments
7. Users can rate the doctors visit and then submit this to the administrator which will then be approved
8. Admin user can login and change the administration details, workflow and extend the application for each business case

 

No	Feature	Effort	Impact	Mandatory
1	Ability for User persona Patient and Admin to login and access the application. The Patient users get the features based on their “type” of the user. E.g. Premium User, Elite User, Regular User.	H	H	Y
2	User Patients will enter the sickness symptoms, want to see a list or Map View of Doctors based on the area.	M	H	N
3	User Patients can also choose Doctors based on the doctor’s expertise.	M	H	Y
4	The Doctors are shown by default in the order of relevance, the user can then sort the list using rating, distance, cost etc.	L	M	Y
5	User Patients can book appointments for the Doctors based on the availability calendar.	M	H	Y
6	User Patients then get a notification and calendar block for their confirmed appointments	L	M	Y
7	Users can rate the doctors visit and then submit this to the administrator which will then be approved	M	M	N
8	Admin user can login and change the administration details, workflow and extend the application for each business case	H	H	Y

 

The backlogs can be taken in the above order itself.