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Design a product to solve the long process of making an appointment with doctors.

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Clarifications:

  • Is this product part of Facebook? [No]
  • Are we targetting a certain country, such as the US? [Sure]
  • Are we focusing on a certain type of patient? [up to you]
  • Do we wanna focus the product on appointment, or we also wanna cover the subsequent part of user journey? [up to you]
  • Do we have any competitive advantage to solving this problem? [No]
  • Is monetization the ultimate goal? [Not in the beginning]
Goal:

Let's say our goal is to develop a product, to help patient get more timely access to doctors.

User:

There are a few potential users/customers for this product.

  • Patients
  • Doctors
  • Hospitals or institutes
  • Insurance company
For the interest of time, I will focus on the analysis of the patient needs, as our product won't be successful if we fail to attract a lot of patients to use our product. More specifically, I would like to focus on patients who has non-life threatening and non-urgent conditions, because this group covers majority of the addressable user and allows more flexibility in solutions.
 
User Need:
  • Patient would like to book a reservation with a qualified doctor
  • Patient also would like to get a doctor with the right qualification
  • Patient might also like to see reviews by other patients before the reservation
Here I will focus on the first problem, but it's also important to make sure #2 and #3 are well covered to ensure user trust.
 
Solutions:
There are a few reasons behind the long wait time to get a doctor appointment.
1. There is not enough doctor in the area
2. Doctors are fully booked, but a lot of appointment doesn't need the normal 45 min slot
 
To address the shortage of doctors, there are a number of potential solutions.
1. Allow user to book with available doctors who are in other locations, or even other countries, this includes: 
a) patient can look up and book consultation with doctors in other regions who have earlier availability
b) patient and doctors can meet over teleconference
c) doctors can prescribe drugs and tests, which can be performed from partnering labs in the region.
d) Test results can be uploaded and shared with the doctor
e) doctors can message patients and initiate follow up sessions.
 
2. Utilize AI-doctors, which can handle routine cases such as fever or allergy to offload human doctors
a) patients can open a case for the AI-doctor, describe their conditions
b) AI-doctors can analyze the case and request subsequent information and checks
c) AI-doctors can either suggest prescription, or refer the patients to a real doctor.
 
To increase the available slots at the doctors, we can consider
3. Give the user the choice to book short consultation sessions, such as 15 minutes, so that doctor can accomodate more patients.
a) patient can choose short consultation sessions, by specify their conditions and topic.
b) doctors or their admin can review and approve or reject the session.
 
Prioritization:
Solution 1: Impact: High; Cost: High; Feasibility: High
Solution 2: Impact: High; Cost: High; Feasibility: Low
Solution 3: Impact: Low; Cost Low; Feasibility: High
 
I will probably priotize solution 1 as P0, solution 3 as P1 and solution 2 as P2, which can become P0 once the technology matures.
 
Metrics:
The most important metrics are MAU and # of successful reservations. Revenue is also important as it will help to ensure the motivation of doctors and institutes.
 
Risks:
There are a lot of risks that requires careful navigation. Such as:
- Legal risk
- Privacy
- Regulation, which might rule against remote doctors.
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Areas you do well.

1.       Solid use of framework – you have a framework and you clearly use it.

2.       Clarifying questions – I think you ask a meaningful set of questions.  I always like to start extremely broad.  Is there a reason patients have a long wait time?

3.       Users – you create a solid list of personas – do note there may be sub personas that could help you really narrow the focus of the questions

a.       Patients

                                                               i.      Urgent care

                                                             ii.      Well visits

                                                           iii.      Specialty care

4.       Solutions – you come up with a meaningful list of solutions including a moonshot (AI based Dr.)

5.       You prioritize the solutions

6.       You provide metrics

7.       You list risks. 

 

Areas to improve

1.       User needs / journey/ pain points – you blend them together a bit.  In this question I think you could really find cool solutions if you split them out a bit more

a.       User journey

                                                               i.      Jane needs to make an appointment

                                                             ii.      She calls her regular Dr. and the soonest she can get in is a long wait. 

                                                           iii.      She calls other Dr. 

·       Many don’t take new patients

·       Others have equally long wait times

·       Those that will see her ASAP don’t have her records. 

·       Maybe no Dr’s in her area have availability

                                                            iv.      She selects a DR that will see her ASAP

b.       She calls her Dr. to have her records transferred

c.       She calls the new Dr. to see if the records have arrived.

d.       She attends the appointment

e.       She explains her medical background (the new Dr. doesn’t know her)

f.        The new Dr orders, tests, treats etc.

g.       She follows up with the new Dr

When I look at the user journey there seem to be pain points around not knowing which Dr.’s has availability and that there are barriers of entry to see a new Dr. (record transfer and patient background).  While I think there is something there about the barriers of entry to see a new Dr. it doesn’t really solve wait time issues, so I’ll focus on lack of visibility about which Dr’s are available as we think about solutions, I also want to consider what happens when there is a shortage in the Dr side of the market place. 

Again really good job!

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