Empowering patients to engage in personalized proactive healthcare
Modern healthcare is still more reactive than proactive. Too often, customers take action too late, only after symptoms present themselves, when the prognosis is already poor. imaware™ wanted to create a better world, one where an ounce of prevention really is worth a pound of cure and consumers have the awareness and access to take action.
imaware and Blackcreek are partners in shaping the future of proactive healthcare. Together, we’ve built a state-of-the-art end-to-end customer experience, embracing patient-led storytelling, furthering scientific advancement, and creating the next generation of value-based care.
Digital Strategy, Creative & Visual Development, User Experience Design, Campaign Development, Enhanced Data & Analytics, eCommerce Development, Enterprise Infrastructure
The waters of the blood testing industry have been muddied by recent memories of the Theranos scandal. Stigma and skepticism are plaguing technology companies that make bold healthcare claims without scientific rigor. With this in mind we approached our engagement with Imaware™ purposefully and delicately. imaware™ empowers patients to engage in personalized proactive healthcare. By using revolutionary at-home blood testing kits, patients can diagnose and monitor life-altering conditions. Modern healthcare continues to be reactive, people take action when symptoms become evident and the prognosis is already poor. imaware™ wanted to help people take control of their health. Delivering solutions where an ounce of prevention is truly worth a pound of cure. Through our partnership with imaware™ we’re shaping the future of proactive healthcare. Starting in late 2018, our team has worked to develop a number of projects alongside the imaware™ team including:
- Development of a digital health platform
- Launching new products
- Transforming imaware™’s brand
We continue to build end-to-end customer experiences, directed by patient-led storytelling to create the next generation of value-based care.
From the start, our relationship with imaware™ has been built on open lines of communication and close collaboration. We opened our doors to the imaware™ team to create synergy of ideas and make our team subject matter experts in their industry. We invited them to participate in our discovery, design thinking, and technical inception workshops. This was key to building an experience where technology, science and regulations were readily considered.
Leveraging our innovation framework we were able to complete rapid prototyping to align stakeholders and drive successful outcomes all the way from ideation to the delivery of an exceptional user experience.
The Discovery Phase is important for our team to get a better understanding of the business and customer experience for each of our clients. During our sessions with the imaware team, we aligned on the business objectives and technology requirements of the product, while clarifying their short-term goals and long-term vision. We dived deep to better understand the problem they were trying to solve, who they were solving it for, and their envisioned solution.
During this phase, our goal was to understand the ins and outs of the product; who is the target demographic, what is their current end-to-end experience with traditional lab testing, and how would imaware change that?
We began our Design Thinking Phase by performing focus groups and user interviews. We focused on gathering information from both consumers and doctors, supplemented with our preexisting dataset. Our design team sifted through and analyzed the information to find the most common pain points of each consumer.
The visuals of the platform were inspired by the same concepts as the information architecture and user experience. We focused on imagery that empowered the user, pairing it with visual assets and a color palette that made the information feel inviting and accessible. This puts the user in a more comfortable state of mind throughout the entire experience from purchase to results.
One of the key architectural objectives was to vertically integrate as many of the components as possible to create a seamless user experience. However, we also understood there may be opportunities in the future to integrate additional tests, labs, LIMS, eCommerce platforms or microarray hardware. To this end, we designed the platform to follow a flexible private API model, that decoupled our vertically integrated backend systems and future-proofed our platform.
In the world of health-based products, there are no shortage of compliance requirements and regulations. There were a number of times where Microdrop had to add integrations from various services for compliance. Due to the flexibility of our system and the rich open source community of NodeJs, we were able to successfully integrate any API, whether it was over REST, SOAP, or HL7. For smaller integrations on the marketing side, we leveraged AWS lambda for their quick response times and geographic availability.
Our codebase is rapidly changing, and we need to be able to move from a PR to production quickly and securely. Leveraging Bitbucket pipelines, we can quickly, easily, and securely move our code to both development pipelines on AWS for testing and production pipelines for deployment, while using respective branches for each environment.
We successfully built and launched a revolutionary platform that helps bring awareness to patients through proactive healthcare.
We built an end-to-end customer experience through a vertically integrated eCommerce platform, a cloud based LIMS, and a state-of-the-art patient portal. We future-proofed the platform by making smart architectural decisions that enables the integration of new tests into the imaware ecosystem through a flexible private API model. We laid the foundations for a trustworthy brand that embraces patient-led storytelling, while maintaining a high level of standard for scientific rigor that both patients and healthcare professionals expect.
We are continuing to innovate with imaware as we launch more tests, develop new IP, and further refine the patient experience.
By integrating our technology, product, and design teams throughout the project lifecycle we delivered results such as:
• Decomposing the technical complexity
• Minimizing costs Accelerating the timeline
• Maximizing overall efficiency.
We have built a strong foundation for our partnership with imaware™ and continue to push the boundaries in proactive healthcare. This year we have launched a new set of at-home tests such as the COVID-19 respiratory and blood test for antibodies.
Looking back on the project, there's a few important takeaways to note:
1. Listen to your end-user, whether they are telling you through clicks, scrolls, or actually just messaging you, their feedback in all forms is invaluable.
2. You’re never going to create the perfect site that pleases everyone, launch but don’t forget to learn.
3. Communicate always. Whether it’s with yourselves, the client, or the end user, you’ll always learn something new by talking to someone and get a fresh perspective.
