UNC HEALTHCARE
Redefining the future of healthcare
The Challenge
The organization at UNC Healthcare felt that its current site no longer kept up with the changes that its business and the healthcare industry were facing in modern society. They also needed a better way to promote everyday health, and wellness, and maintain an active lifestyle messaging.
The Approach
UNC Health embarked on a multi-year engagement with Hero Digital to ideate the future of a healthcare system focused on being more patient centric. A multidisciplinary team at Hero Digital first started by developing the “Care Journey” that meets the customer where they are in the process of diagnosis. There were three phases of diagnosis identified–research, diagnosed, second opinion. Once the user selected, the site would offer content to hold the patient's hand from diagnosis to scheduling an appointment. The idea was to change the patient relationship to develop lifelong patients and erase the idea of a cold, transactional medical institution.
The Concept Phase
A number of ideas were developed that focused on transparency in the healthcare industry included:
Urgent/Primary Care Triage Tool
Through a simple set of questions about the patient’s condition, provide a recommendation on proceeding to Urgent Care or Primary Care services based on the answers provided. If an Urgent Care visit was advised, a list of nearby locations and wait times with the ability to reserve would be offered up. If a Primary Care visit was needed, a list of physicians with the most immediate availability was listed.
Doctor Match
A tool to determine the best physician(s) for your needs by answering a few personal preference questions upfront. After submitting the answers, the user would be given the top three matches with the ability to book right in the flow.
Online Physician Booking
One of the fundamental reasons for the redesign was the ability of a patient to book online 24/7 to seek care. There were logistical obstacles around some physicians and specialties needing referrals but providing a path for patients to begin the journey with a primary care physician was the goal.
In order to help ensure that patients were making the right decision and they didn’t reach dead ends in the experience, we included insurance validations and a list of similar practitioners if the physician was not actively accepting new patients.
Because of HIPAA patient protections, a lot of the initial analytics reporting ability was removed from the site. We were able to understand that the newly implemented online booking flow was very effective in allowing patients to easily schedule appointments.
+400%
Uptick in Online Appointment Booking
Systematized Design
On the visual side, we took a minimally basic internal rebrand and expanded it into a full fledged design language that could be applied to traditional marketing to an extensive design system. We flushed the system out for compliance and developed a set of atoms, molecules and structures that could quickly be assembled to adjust to the needs of the organization.
The real fun came from developing the empathetic design that really brought the personality of UNC Health with bright color expressions to the digital experience. For example, we added unexpected moments like an animated multicultural personnel icon set that added a bit of fun and intrigue to what could have been just a flat experience.
