Patient Treatment Support
Reimagining a high-tech treatment support system for patients with Atrial Fibrillation
Client
A US Cardiovascular business
Discovery Phase
Spring - Fall 2022
Team
Discovery research and strategy by Cassandra Cortez Gerardo with Johnson & Johnson Design Studio and Diagram (patient research partner).
Illustrations from an end-to-end patient journey map
A US cardiovascular business wanted to improve patient persistency on its blood thinner medication.
The Business Problem
21% of AFib patients prescribed the business’s blood thinner medication abandoned treatment after the first prescription fill.
The Initial Scope
Develop a virtual patient support program MVP for a very niche subset of Atrial Fibrillation patients on a specific category of blood thinner medication.
Background
Challenges
Patient research was not scoped in the original business proposal. The business supplied existing research that encompassed blood thinner data from patients across a wide array of conditions specific to the medication. These variables made it difficult to assess the specific pain points for the subset of patients the cardiovascular business wanted to focus on. Deskside research still left gaps in the patient journey.
Screenshot of Mural board mapping process. White boxes with orange text showed unknowns and assumptions within the patient journey. Note: copy blurred for confidentiality. Colors changed to preserve brand anonymity.
Screenshot of visualized consolidation of existing research pain points, interventions, and opportunities along a loose patient journey. Relevant findings made their way into our final journey map. Note: copy blurred for confidentiality. Colors changed to preserve brand anonymity.
We conducted an internal brand audit with various stakeholder groups which revealed potential redundancies if we were to move forward with creating a digital MVP. This audit showed that there was a successful digital patient support CMS already running that our business partners were unaware of. In addition, we ran a competitive audit to map the current patient support landscape, which uncovered gaps in various support categories and delivery methods. We also constructed best-in-class customer experiences within and outside of the pharma market.
Slide from the competitive analysis: Areas in blue show gaps in service across product and its competitors. Note: products have been blurred out for confidentiality.
Slide from the competitive analysis: Services were then classified by six types of support.
Slide from the competitive analysis: The business’s product as well as competitive products were then mapped based on the offerings of those six types of support to show opportunities for growth.
A Revised Human-Centered Scope that Saved Money
By bringing our business partners through our initial process and continuously mapping the patient journey, we were able to convince the business that further research was needed to fully understand the WHY behind treatment discontinuation — the current proof of discontinuation was quantified through medication refill data without any further context. We also wanted to widen the scope of patients to all Atrial Fibrillation patients — not just ones coming out of acute care — and also include patients’ care partners, as previous research had not factored these potential users into the story. This allowed the team to test assumptions the business held about patient discontinuation, clarify the end-to-end patient and care partner journeys, uncover additional pain points, and identify new opportunities that would pave the way for a strategic roadmap for the following year.
Our audits and rescope of the project to include primary research saved the business from investing $8M in building a digital support program that would have been based on unvalidated assumptions to create an MVP with content that likely would have cannibalized an already successful patient program.
Accomplishments
Process + Deliverables
We worked with our business partners to prioritize assumptions that we would test with Atrial Fibrillation patients, caregivers, pharmacists, and nurses. Screeners and discussion guides were developed for each group of participants. Due to compliance standards, our patient and care partner interviews needed to be double-blind, so I brought in the research firm Diagram to facilitate while I conducted the nurse and pharmacist in-depth interviews. We followed with co-creation research in which we collaborated with patients and care partners to develop their ideal future state for patient support.
From our research, we discovered Atrial Fibrillation to be a journey filled with uncertainties and anxiety. While every patient’s journey is different, we mapped a universal end-to-end journey to show the range of challenges and questions that patients and their care partners face throughout. The map is intended to be used by the business partners as well as the brand and external teams to evoke empathy and inspire actionable responses.
Overview of interactive patient journey map.
A breakdown showing how to use the map.
Adapting to Scope Changes
The initial scope of work was to include this current and future state journey map as well as a comprehensive strategic roadmap to guide our business partners in the next steps for developing a MVP for 2023. Unforeseen changes to the business, however, changed the scope of work midway through the project, and with the dissolution of the Johnson & Johnson design studio at the end of 2022, our work needed to be packaged in a way to transfer knowledge to outside agencies. We continued with out research synthesis and shareout, but in lieu of a comprehensive strategic roadmap, our journey map contained thought starters for these external agencies to guide strategic planning for our business partners’ 2023 patient support and beyond.
Setting Our Business Partners Up for Success
In our final map deliverable, we included interventions called “Moments That Matter” that addressed the pain points and opportunity areas for helping patients and their care partners extend and adhere to treatment.
Section of the patient journey map showing the “Moments That Matter”. The “Moments That Matter” segements extended when clicked. The focused content provides a cleaner map experience while also allowing the viewer to concentrate on ideating for one moment at a time.
Our research invalidated assumptions around treatment discontinuation, and further research was required to validate the external variables that were uncovered during our interviews with our various stakeholder research groups. Confidentiality prohibits further explanation in this summary.
Regardless of the additional recommended research, our team was confident that addressing these “Moments that Matter” would have a significant impact on patient treatment persistency by providing unprecedented patient support for patients with Atrial Fibrillation in the blood thinner market. To empower our business partners and their future strategy and design teams, we created “how might we” statements for each “moment”, which were coupled with design thought starters and lists of the potential actors involved.
Breakdown of the “Moments That Matter” section. Note: content has been blurred for confidentiality.
We also created patient “mindsets”. These mindsets were not aligned to specific demographics but rather existed to define patients’ health beliefs and outlooks that help illuminate their decision-making processes and behaviors. These mindsets would serve as potential lenses for future teams to utilize when designing patient solutions.
Patient mindset breakdown. Mindsets were broken into 3 groups. Each group contains beliefs, actions, an example of how this mindset may act within a given point in their journey, and things to consider when designing for this mindset.
Between our comprehensive end-to-end patient journey map, documented deskside and primary research and shareouts, competitive audit and content audit findings and recommendations, we encouraged our business partners and their external design agencies to ideate, share, discuss, and then build upon the ideas generated. We then recommended they prioritize these ideas, map to a timeline with milestones, and determine work steams, dependencies, and owners for implementation.
Barring our company restructuring, these facets would have been included in our final deliverable, and work to determine the next steps would have been in our scope for 2023. Regardless, our team felt confident in ending our project with the knowledge that we were:
Able to hear directly from patients and provide a platform and an audience to hear their stories and their struggles,
Prevent our business partners from spending $8M on a support program that would have had little to no impact to the existing patient support ecosystem,
And provide a body of work that would set up our business partners for success in the coming year.