The UX design shift mHealth is bringing to Canadian patients

Almost any of us can describe a bad experience we’ve had with the Canadian health-care system: long wait times, indifferent staff, questionable treatments. It’s doubtful many of us would suggest the solution lies with smartphones and tablets.

This week in Toronto, however, medical industry executives at the Mobile Healthcare Summit gathered to discuss a variety of projects in which apps and handheld devices are transforming the way doctors, nurses and other providers deliver care, and the way they could empower patients to become more self-sufficient. If the potential of mHealth delivers as promised, it opens up a considerable opportunity to completely rethink the user experience of health.

For Dr. Ed Brown, CEO of the Ontario Telemedicine Network (OTN), the big shift began not with the advent of tablet computers but the shift from in-patient to outpatient surgeries.

“In the 1990s, you would be admitted the day before, have surgery and then hang around for a few days and go home,” he said. “People realized we had the technology, we had the data, and we started to move those people out of that model and into the community. Now they might go to a standalone cataract clinic. Most surgery is now done in that way.”

That being said, the UX of most Canadian patients continues to be an in-person affair. “Right now pretty much all the medicine we do in North America is bums in seats. The patient has to show up,” he said. “What you are going to see is a dramatic and exponential shift where most of our interaction will be virtual. You’re not going to face the kid sneezing on you with the flu in the waiting room.”

Telemedicine: The beginnings of mHealth

Brown predicts that by 2019, 50 percent of the medical treatment we receive will come remotely. The OTN has been committed to making this happen for years, using videoconferencing systems, for example, to connect patients in remote communities who would otherwise have difficulty getting to a doctor to receive consultations through a monitor screen. OTN used to achieve this through fairly heavy-duty hardware and software but is now creating apps that will make it much easier.

An eConsult app, for instance, will streamline the information that gets sent from one provider to another. Brown used a dermatology scenario to explain: A patient might show up with a funny rash, but a doctor may need to get a second, third or even fourth opinion before treatment is prescribed.

“You can snap a photo, add data from medical record and submit it. It’s trending around three days to get a response,” he said. Through more traditional methods, the same diagnostic process can sometimes take six months otherwise.

Stats that show mHealth early success

UX designers and even everyday Canadians might worry that telemedicine will make health-care delivery less personal, but Brown has survey data of OTN patients that suggests the opposite is true. He said in one study, 92 percent were satisfied with their telemedicine visit. “And if you asked the eight percent who weren’t, they would often say it was because they didn’t like their doctor,” he said. “People are really ready to do this. Patients love it. The only missing link is the providers in the middle — they’re not totally incorporated into the system.”

Of course, mHealth isn’t simply about providing access or connecting patients and providers through technology. It’s also a matter of presenting information in ways that both parties can easily understand what’s going on and collaborate on solutions.

John Mattison, chief medical information officer and assistant medical director of Kaiser Permanente in San Diego and the conference chair, suggested the goal of improved health-care UX is orchestrating what he called a “behavioural symphony of wellness,” in which doctors, nurses, patients and even their families are all working with the same information. This will require particularly sophisticated ways to visualize medical data, he said, pointing to VisualMD.com as an example of where the field is headed.

“We’re not going to have one template,” that makes sense for all situations he said,  “We’ll need to personalize from the lens of the patient, from the lens of the physician.” The extended caregiver network, which could include family, friends or even coworkers, is not to be ignored here, he added. In fact, Mattison said the influence of our personal caregiver network is much more powerful than our professional caregiver network.

Although the UX of mHealth is a true work in progress, Brown said the growing willingness of doctors — a group known for being slow to change — to embrace the mobile computing is a positive sign.

“I used to chase them around trying to get them to use technology,” he said. “Now they’re chasing me around asking me for stuff I can’t give them.”

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The research opportunity: Health-care providers and consumers will need a wide range of data visualization and other tools to enhance UX on mobile devices. This post from HealthUnbound offers a good overview of what’s happening in the space today and may provide some inspiration.

The commercialization potential: HackingHealth.ca is a collective of UX researchers, developers and other health-care professionals who are creating unique ideas worth exploring.

The next thing you should read on CommerceLab: Browse our archive of health-care stories featuring profiles of innovative startups experimenting with UX, gamification and more.