Background of the Apollo Health Project
Apollo Health developed a relationship with a doctor who has been researching Alzheimer’s for 40+ years. The doctor created a protocol resulting in slowing and even reversing the disease. His process to get patients started on his revolutionary protocol was labor-intensive, time-consuming and not scalable.
He would order a custom set of blood work, then create a personalized protocol for each patient, which he was doing manually by using the test results to calculate his recommendations.
Our team worked to define the products he needed, then design, develop and deploy a website, an app, and some printed materials for patients and caregivers.
Simple website layout for non tech-savvy caregivers. This involved distilling down very complicated information to enable ease-of-use and maximizing concepts.
My Role for the Apollo Health Project
I worked with the doctor and other stakeholders (investors, participating physicians) to determine parts of his process we could address. A cross-functional team of myself, engineering and product management defined the scope of the project and mapped out deliverables. I conducted stakeholder interviews and developed the information architecture for the website and app.
I developed UX design storyboards and produced wireframes. I created paper and digital design stereotypes. I produced design guidelines and documents for implementation and training of physicians. I design-directed the graphic designer and worked with him to ensure usability. I collaborated with back and front-end software engineers to find workarounds and best-solutions for instances when development hit a snag or a different implementation might be better suited.
Early stage working out the architecture
Users & Use Cases for the Apollo Health Project
The users of the suite of products were Alzheimer's patients who would use the app on a mobile device and the website on either mobile or desktop.
We also developed a website and tools for physicians to use in their offices and and technicians to use in blood-testing labs.
Personas – patient on a mobile device and doctor in his office
Challenge & Process for the Apollo Health Project
After the research was completed, I begin brainstorming interface designs. This is largely an experimental process where I iterate through many designs and proposed solutions to the problems. Early in the process I being showing ideas to the doctor and our team. This, I find, brings about a certain synergy of ideas where we often are able to collaborate and achieve a better design as a result of our interaction. This is, perhaps, the longest part of the UX process for me. It is also the most rewarding and frustrating. I enjoy working through the problems and finding the solutions. But this process is a creative one that takes time. And every project I have ever worked on involves time constraints. Thus there is this constant tug of war on every project to build the best interface in the least amount of time.
We needed to enable the doctor to scale his protocol to more patients seamlessly. He also wanted to be able to train more physicians en masse rather than individually, which was just not scalable.
We learned that success for the patient was reliant on their strict adherence to the protocol. We needed to build a product that would encourage and reward patients for meeting goals and completing tasks.
Wireframe with open-issue callouts. For use in design review with stakeholders.
Quick and mostly-informational site design.
The main goal of this site was to reduce the number of incoming calls to the doctor's office. He wanted to publish the information about his protocol and reduce his time and expense managing incoming inquiries.
Solution for the Apollo Health Project
We designed a consumer-facing informational website for patient education, registration and patient onboarding.
We developed an auto-generated custom report for patients to understand the protocol and to use as a resource with their personal physician.
We designed and built a mobile app for patients with a “gamification” component to encourage adherence.
Result of the Apollo Health Project
The doctor increased his ability to deliver patient reports with the tools we created. His personal time investment was reduced significantly per patient and he reduced his incoming patient support emails exponentially.
At the end of my role in the project, understanding of the protocol was increased as reported to us by the doctor. According to our reporting, patient adherence also increased.
After my work, the project was rebranded: https://www.ahnphealth.com/
Custom report for patients to understand the protocol.