Elevating Medical Decision-Making
The Problem
In North America's intricate healthcare landscape, Zenxmed was born to cater to doctors' demand for a more tailored, informative, and efficient experience. This case study delves into the creation of an easy-to-use digital platform that caters to physicians' needs and transforms how they interact with medical content. The platform prioritized physicians' needs while streamlining their access to medical information.
My Role
As the leader of a multidisciplinary team of designers and developers, I implemented a comprehensive user-centered design approach that included audience research, iterative testing, branding, and startup formation.
Identifying User Needs: The Power of Empathy and Hypothesis
We began by identifying our users: physicians, medical residents, and students. From there, we developed two key hypotheses.
Speedy Navigation: The quicker physicians could sift through clinical guidelines, the more accurately they'd perform at the point of care.
Professional Engagement: The shift from traditional authorship to contributor roles would drive physicians to share knowledge and create communal accountability in medical practices.
Crafting the User Experience
The Zenxmed Mobile App
Our aim was to create an application that could assist physicians in making critical decisions while treating patients. The decision tree format incorporates contextual information and references to simplify the cognitive burden on doctors during crucial moments.
The commenting system on our platform was truly remarkable. It provided a great opportunity for community participation and allowed experienced physicians to contribute their expertise, which enhanced the medical content. We also developed a data tracking plan to record user interactions and further strengthen this feature.
The Zenxmed CMS
Knowing that our platform needed a robust backend, we adopted a phased approach to content management. In the first phase, we leveraged free tools like draw.io and developed a content contribution framework that allowed us to roll out 100 algorithms in six months.
In the second phase, we unveiled our custom CMS, integrating features that enabled contributors to visualize and fine-tune the algorithms they were crafting. This included the ability to leave notes on the content, thereby adding an extra layer of scrutiny and peer review.
Authenticating and Social Cues
As a platform exclusively for practicing physicians, students, and residents, we encountered the challenge of verifying user credibility. To tackle this, we developed a comprehensive onboarding process that collected crucial information to validate their credentials and exhibit their professional experience. This approach enabled us to authenticate our users and uphold the platform's exclusivity.
We were able to improve our design process by prioritizing the needs of physicians, medical students, and residents. By doing so, we created a product that effectively addressed their challenges, resulting in higher user engagement and satisfaction.
Final Findings
Zenxmed's Journey of Digital Transformation
The decision tree format in the Zenxmed app addressed the physicians' need for rapid information access, reinforcing the hypothesis that efficient navigation of clinical guidelines can significantly enhance point-of-care decisions.
The ability for physicians to engage with the platform through comments was invaluable. It facilitated knowledge sharing and introduced a system of checks and balances as experienced professionals refined and authenticated content.
Our detailed onboarding process maintains the platform's exclusivity and integrity by ensuring only qualified professionals can access and contribute to content.
Zenxmed's success in deploying high-quality medical algorithms while building a more advanced content delivery system can be attributed to their phased approach to content management. This strategy was not only time-efficient but also cost-effective.