The Patient, Doctor + Lab Ecosystem
The legendary tale that started as a noble pursuit and landed the founders in jail is a complex one sensationalized by the media. Many things could have worked better. However, the software and service design launched and worked well - customers loved the experience. What we attempted to solve still plagues our healthcare system today, and I hope this iteration has taught us a few things about collaboration.
There were numerous iterations of everything. We may have seen a different outcome if we had maintained the course on solving the primary problem - the patient experience.
The company initially started with the simple goal of increasing patient compliance in lab testing. We wanted to make the experience convenient, affordable, and accessible. Over time, while fundraising, the founders became increasingly aware of the role of marketing and its effects on raising money. Despite not having a functional prototype that would enable a panoply of blood tests to be run with a single drop (or a few drops) of blood, the founders approached TBWA/CHIAT/DAY, where the invention of “just one drop” and “the lab test, reinvented” emerged.
The brand campaign was a massive success in raising the next rounds and immediately drew suspicion in the medical community as the company had never participated in peer reviews. Despite the early controversy, I was drawn in by the problem space and the ecosystem that needed to be enabled to address fundamental human factors. I left TBWA/CHIAT/DAY and brought on a multidisciplinary team at Theranos, where our day-to-day workload included conducting research, building and testing prototypes, formulating hypotheses, and arriving at solutions for the healthcare ecosystem.
The Patient Service Center
The user experience started at PSCs located in Walgreens. Lab techs checked in patients at the portal. Patient lab orders, prescribed by their doctors, had to be transcribed before the lab draw could be initiated. The sequence of screens is not in order and does not represent any real end-to-end experience. A number of conditional use cases occur in the live environment, which would change the sequencing of the examples shown.
The Cloud Transcriptionist (a.k.a. Super Mario)
It’s damn near impossible to OCR lab orders, so we had to arrive at a different solution. I coined the name of this service in homage to one of my favorite past times.
The transcription team needed an interface to enable quick data validation and entry. Since there are no regulations on the design of lab orders, each provider has unique systems in place to generate orders. OCR was an early consideration; however, the permutations of lab orders made using OCR untenable over time. This tool enabled the average time to complete transcription from 15 minutes to 1 minute. Patients could walk into a Walgreens, fulfill their lab order and walk out within an average of 8 minutes.
The Phlebotomist Interface
When a patient order is in the system, the phlebotomist can initiate the sample collection process. Due to the unique nature of the device and sample size, we designed an intelligent interface that provided dynamic instructions for the collection methods required for each test.
The Patient Portal
It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or perhaps you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.