Autors:
Álvaro Valbuena – Data Scientist Equinox AI Lab
Tifanny Fresneda – UX Researcher Holistic Design Lab
Globally, the healthcare system changed the way users connect to different types of medical services. After COVID-19, the appropriation of telemedicine has manifested itself globally. In 2018, this medicine modality started to be priced at $38.046 million USD and is expected to increase to $103.897 million USD by 2024. (Frontiersin, 2018).
According to the article How to Measure the Value of Virtual Health Care (2021), before COVID-19, telemedicine care only reached 1% in the United States. At those times, virtual care did not have a direct relationship with a person in the health sector behind a screen, i.e., there was a total disconnection between the virtual ecosystem and face-to-face care.
Moving on to a more specific context, in Colombia, according to figures from MinSalud, on April 30th, 2021, only 4% of the total number of health service provider institutions had enabled the telemedicine modality (MinSalud, 2021). Concerning the number of appointments performed using telemedicine before the pandemic caused by COVID-19, in Colombia, this figure did not reach 50,000 (Delgado, 2020).
On the other hand, during the period between March 2020 and March 2021, an average of 49.5 million teleconsultations were performed under this modality per month (MinSalud, 2021). Additionally, for the same period of time, 32.5 telehealth consultations were carried out (2.5 per month on average) (MinSalud, 2021).
Due to the pandemic, medical care through teleconsultations increased considerably, undeniably generating significant challenges for the sector. As a result, its operations and technology centers of medical care centers and hospitals have been transformed, and the experience in medical health services has had to face new ways of solving the challenges and needs of users when making use of the medical service virtually.
Opportunities and new needs in telemedicine
Benefits that telemedicine has brought with it should be emphasized, for example, shortening distances and times for users, more efficient operating processes, and a model of care based on clinical suitability. It means that it is possible to decide which patients should and can be attended by teleconsultation and which can be attended by traditional face-to-face medicine, and who will be able to have hybrid care. In addition, it is possible to decide who will have the ability to monitor and carry out remote controls of medical and surgical procedures; and which communities will be protected by reducing their exposure to hospitals and centers with high potential infectious load, among others (Márquez, 2020).
Thus, the telemedicine service has solved several of the needs initiated from the pandemic in the health service before it. But the use of this new modality has also originated new pains and conditions in the service. It has differences from the traditional care; the interaction between doctor-patient has been weakened, and some users claim that the empathy that doctors have in front of a screen is lower than usual (Márquez, 2020).
On the other hand, patients also claim their fear of misdiagnosis because telemedicine generates gaps concerning the physical review; it can trigger that the service experience is not optimal for the patient. Many physicians were not trained in this type of care before the pandemic, which generated inconveniences when it came to humanizing a service provided in a purely digital way.
In addition to this, another pain of this modality is that it requires the population to use smart devices. Still, the country has a population with low monetary acquisition for this type of commodity and high levels of digital illiteracy (Márquez, 2020).
Design Thinking in healthcare
With new needs, design thinking generates value by promoting ideas that innovate and produce solutions to user pains in the health sector. However, design can intervene in any user medical care touchpoints, either from the medical closer approach, in appointment preparation, following up the treatment, and at the end of the intervention.
Thanks to in-depth interviews, it is possible to understand the needs of the patient’s health service experience to understand their context and generate value solutions consistent with their realities. After this, based on the information collected and preliminary findings, brainstorming, and co-creation sessions, creativity-based techniques are promoted to generate as many solutions as possible to choose the most valuable ones in the end.
Finally, the aim is to convert these ideas into tangible prototypes to visualize and corroborate these opportunities and reach a successful final result.
The ultimate purpose of applying design thinking to any sector is to improve the user experience in all service touchpoints. To create new dynamics that change some moment of the journey or generate points of contact (both digital and non-digital) that improve or enhance the patient’s experience.
Artificial Intelligence in the development of the user experience
Now, why use AI to improve the user experience? Because Artificial Intelligence (AI) also has the potential to transform the way healthcare is delivered and can lead to better outcomes and improve productivity and efficiency in service delivery.
This technology can produce a wide range of improvements, such as better focusing a physician’s efforts to create a diagnosis or early detection of the development of more severe conditions before they arise.
Although AI is rising and its long-term implications are uncertain, its future applications in healthcare delivery and how each of us thinks about our health may be transformative.
We can imagine a future where data obtained from wearables, portable devices, and implants change our understanding of human biology, enabling personalized, real-time treatment for all.
Doctor-free testing
Preferential behaviors towards remote monitoring and diagnostic tests are currently trending. In addition, the relevance of algorithms for sorting and classifying stored patient data has led to a change in the dynamics of visiting the doctor (Future Today Institute, 2021).
Thanks to smartphones and smartwatches use, blood pressure readings and electrocardiograms are just a click away. In addition, data recorded and stored in the cloud daily has made it possible to monitor and diagnose people’s health status in real-time. (Future Today Institute, 2021).
“People who wear an Apple Watch know that an abnormally high or low heart rate or rhythm may suggest atrial fibrillation” (Future Today Institute, 2021).
Thus, the aforementioned diagnostic devices link to moments of need for contact, consultation, and follow-up/treatment. In other words, the data collected by this type of device in the home will allow quick and timely detection of health problems, generating alerts for the user to inquire more about their medical condition and approach specialists in the sector.
On the other hand, in this first need for contact, the dynamics of taking action through these devices begin to change. However, when the patient detects atypical data in his devices generated daily, he would contact his health care provider to evaluate the problem in greater detail.
The intervention of these devices to automatically connect patients with doctors and pharmacists generates less concern for the user to take action regarding their medical condition. Automating these processes will allow for better medical care, more assertive diagnoses, and a faster connection with the entire healthcare ecosystem related to the patient, alleviating the pains mentioned above of teleconsultation, such as the fear of misdiagnosis.
Likewise, the data generated will provide a more efficient medical consultation and a better follow-up of the treatment given; this data will help the medical staff to have an accurate and precise diagnosis of the pathology at the time of the consultation.
The creation of these devices has generated changes in the way patients interact with their doctors and the healthcare system. However, these devices do not come out of anywhere; they are born from a rigorous process of conceptualization through Design Thinking and the technological development behind it. In short, they are born thanks to methodologies (such as AI4UX from Equinox AI Lab) that unite the best of both fields of knowledge.
AI models could be used to analyze data generated by wearables (for example, a portable heart monitor or a smartwatch) to identify among many measurements points those that could represent conditions of severity to then be analyzed by specialized medical personnel. This approach can optimize the time spent by specialists in these tasks by helping them focus their efforts on analyzing the most critical data, avoiding the review of thousands of measurements that do not represent significant values.
Pharmacies as health allies
Pharmacies have been the most frequent point of contact for people regarding immediate and fast medical care (Pérez & Silva, 2015). Being family and community spaces, they generate a strategic role in advising and connecting patients with other health services.
If we add to this connection the use of data related to patient’s health, the role of these places would be enhanced and with more significant evolution in the sector. For example, the pilot program of CVS Pharmacy, with more than 1,000 branches in the United States, automatically analyzed and detected customers with high rates of non-compliance in the control and management of their health conditions. This information enabled the prioritization of patients for training programs and individual counseling for each pharmacist to prevent or treat chronic diseases for each branch’s users (CVS Health, 2021).
This pilot shows a judicious consumption of medicines by patients and a closing of gaps in medical care, an increased focus on preventive medicine, a reduction of unnecessary doctor or emergency services visits, and lower medical costs (CVS Health, 2021).
It is not just a matter of generating data just to develop it. It is essential to give this information a valuable purpose that addresses the needs of patients to provide a higher level of medical well-being. Currently, there is pain in the virtual care of patients, which requires the support of non-specialized medical personnel for the physical care of patients who cannot go to medical health centers due to mobility problems or lack of time or resources.
At first glance, it is possible to say that this pain could be covered by non-specialized health personnel in pharmaceutical centers in the community. Still, a strategic Design Thinking process would be of great importance to design the whole experience and correctly address every need and opportunity in this situation, from the appointment request to the follow-up of the condition and closure of the process.
In this case, a possible AI solution could be analyzing the different drugs that a person consumes to identify potential diseases that could develop because of their doses and the side effects that the current drugs could create. Therefore, this approach could be a step forward in implementing preventive medicine since it is looking for ways to foresee possible medical conditions so that the user can take the necessary measures.
CONCLUSIONS
As could be seen in the previous examples, the business opportunities are many, considering that other types of approaches can be developed for these same situations. There are many opportunities for improvement if you look closely at the whole process that a user has, from the moment the patient has a medical appointment to the completion of treatment. Identifying the user’s most important pains, and adding the use of technological tools such as Artificial Intelligence, will impact user experience and will optimate resources in the health system enormously.
In countries where the transition of using new technologies started, those who correctly identify the user’s pains and locate the most successful technologies are the ones who will be able to take advantage of all the opportunities that open up by addressing problems using UX.
REFERENCES
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Omar Ford. (20 de septiembre 2020). 10 FDA Cleared or Approved Wearable Devices that Redefined Healthcare. Medical Device and Diagnostic Industry. https://www.mddionline.com/digital-health/10-fda-cleared-or-approved-wearable-devices-redefined-healthcare/
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