Higi Virtual Health Stations
Connecting rural communities to care via public telehealth stations
Role: Lead designer | Responsibilities: UX, UI | Duration: 2023-2025
Background
Every year, less and less Americans are receiving the proper medical attention necessary to stay healthy and access to care is expected to become a bigger challenge going forward, especially in rural and low income communities.
When patients lack preventative care, they tend to be unaware of health issues until they become more dangerous resulting in expensive ER visits or worse. This raises the overall cost of care for these patients and for risk baring entities.
Problems to solve
Customer
Providers are struggling to convert rural patients to active patients because the only way to do this is by seeing the patient in person.
Providers need better tools for detecting patients who are at-risk for developing a chronic condition or are currently living with an unmanaged condition.
Traditional telehealth solutions lack the ability to paint a comprehensive picture of the patient’s health because they are unable to measure vitals virtually.
Physician shortages are making it increasingly difficult for doctors to see all of their patients, especially in rural locations.
Consumer
Many rural patients are unable to establish and maintain a relationship with a doctor due to the office not being accessible and do not have adequate connectivity for traditional telehealth.
Rural patients are struggling to manage their chronic conditions successfully because they aren’t able to see a doctor frequently enough.
There is typically no way for patients who utilize traditional telehealth to measure their vitals like the doctor would if they were being seen in office.
Patients are ending up in the ER and are incurring debilitating medical debt due to not getting preventative care as well as not knowing who to access healthcare besides going to the ER.
Opportunities
Customer
Enable providers to reach patients in rural locations and especially see those with chronic conditions more frequently.
Enable providers to see patients virtually without sacrificing their ability to measure patient vitals.
Prepare the physician for the telehealth visit with pertinent information so they’re not flying blind, helping improve patient satisfaction and visit efficiency.
Consumer
Provide an accessible, convenient way for rural patients to see the doctor as often as needed.
Enable patients to measure and share their vitals with their doctor without having to go to the doctor’s office.
Provide resource-constrained patients access to a telehealth visit without needing to seek out reliable WiFi, cellular data or a personal device.
User adoption + satisfaction metrics
36 users
have initated a telehealth session on station since June 2024 launch
30.6%
users who initiated a session successfully connected with a doctor and completed a visit
15 minutes
average time spent with the provider
users who completed the after-visit survey expressed having a positive experience using the service
100%
50%
users who completed the after-visit survey would recommend this service to others
Product currently in market
This experience lives on a “Higi Station”, a health kiosk that allows users to measure their biometrics in retail locations such as grocery stores, community centers and gyms across the country. We were able to utilize the existing “Higi Station” product to enable this telehealth service.
While watching the demo, keep in mind that a user would be sitting down at one of these stations, that the experience would be displayed on the screen in front of them, and they would be navigating via touchscreen.
Design process
MVP Discovery - Flow Chart
For MVP, the team decided to hold off the biometric reading feature which would enable users to measure their vitals during the telehealth visit. Our goal for the MVP was to simply get the infrastructure set up for a user to fill out an intake questionnaire and successfully get connected with a doctor.
Once the product positioning and requirements were gathered, I started the design discovery with a simple flow chart to map out movement through the experience based off what we currently knew.
MVP Discovery - Journey Mapping
Once I had the initial draft of what the user’s movement through the experience could be, I was able to create a journey map to document and hypothesize user sentiments and emotions. Doing this leads to discovery of potential user pain points and opportunities.
MVP Research - Usability Study
Hypothesizing user sentiments and pain points only get you so far. It’s important to also get real time user feedback early so that you can set a foundation that is rooted in real research instead of assumption. This usability study was completed by myself, my product manager and a content strategist.
Primary research goals:
Uncover any usability issues that might prevent users from successfully completing the telehealth booking flow.
Are users comfortable providing the personal data in the booking flow in order to do a telehealth visit?
Obtain a pulse on general interest in doing a telehealth visit at a public health station.
Approach:
6 total virtual interviews with current users, 1 hour each
3 male, 3 female
5 participants were 60+, 1 participant was between 20-29 years old.
All participants had previous experience using a telehealth service.
Research findings:
All 6 participants were supportive of the product and thought of it as valuable for the target audience, given that privacy would be provided.
4 out of 6 participants expressed desire to know the qualifications of the doctor or what network they were apart of
50% of the participants experienced minor UX hiccups during insurance collection due to having more than one insurance provider
General comfortability around agreeing to share data for all participants. None expressed major concerns or hesitancy with consenting to share health data
All 6 participants quickly skimmed through the consent language, did not read all the way through before agreeing to consent.
MVP Launch
The MVP experience launched in June 2024, piloting in 3 upstate NY rural communities. 🎉
Each town received 1 station that was placed inside a FiveStar bank in a private room where users could close the door behind them. We partnered with the University of Rochester Medical Center for our first launch where users were able to connect with trusted providers from that hospital system.
Design process
MLP: Enabling users to measure their biometrics on station before a telehealth visit
Adding biometric readings to the telehealth experience provides value to the user that a traditional telehealth experience cannot.
Once the user stories and requirements were finalized, I put together two user flows for stakeholders to review and discuss - weight + blood pressure vitals as a combined step in the intake flow or two separate steps. The team ultimately decided on combining the biometrics as a single step.
Wireframes immediately followed.
MLP Launch
The MLP launched in the fall of 2024.
Net new additions and updates:
3 new stations under the URMC partnership. All new stations were placed in upstate NY. These locations included 2 senior living centers and 1 neighborhood YMCA center.
A progress list was added to the user experience to provide transparency to user as to what was expected during the visit intake.
2 vital measurement opportunities: blood pressure (pulse included) and weight.
Ability to see vital results on a side panel while actively on a telehealth call.
The MLP is currently what is on the market today. Click here to be directed to a demo of the experience.