Overview

Problem Area

In many low and middle-income countries, their healthcare infrastructure is different from developed countries and each other. In these areas, community health workers (CHW) serve their neighborhoods by providing in-home care to patients rather than having someone travel long distances to access the nearest clinic.

Running RDTs for various diseases is one of the community health worker's tasks. However, these workers look at more than just the test results themselves because the tests can be only 60% accurate in some cases. Our nonprofit partner helps CHWs administer rapid tests more effectively by making the process easier and more accurate through the HealthPulse DxA app.

Goal

Our team focused on the DeDX aspect of the app to improve the communication of the results. This will support CHWs by providing more accurate instructions and more confident recommendations to their patients.

Users and Audience

• Primary: Community health workers who provide care in low to medium income countries
• Secondary: Patients who are receiving care from the community health workers

Limitations

• Limited time frame: Having a 10-week time frame for this project, we decided to focus on one disease and took COVID-19 as an example.
• Recruitment: To work around the difficulties of interviewing the actual CHWs themselves, we recruited non-medical professionals in the states who have experience administrating COVID-19 rapid tests to represent our target group.
• Technical constraints: A primary consideration throughout the project was the technical constraints in the communities, including constant disconnection from the internet, older model smartphones, and low to zero familiarity with mobile devices.

Design Process

The project went through the discovery phase, followed by the design phase. Our process included user interviews, stakeholder interviews, secondary research, interaction concepting, and building wireframes and visual comps.

Discovery

User Interview & Stakeholder Interview

We talked with people that have experience administering rapid tests and learned about what the client already knows about the target group.

From the user interviews and stakeholder interviews, we learned that:

• Pain points typically occur outside of the actual administration and interpretation for administrators
• Administrators with less medical training were more likely to start testing cautiously and gained confidence over time.
• Administrators would appreciate guidance around communicating and interacting with patients, while patients would benefit from a support screen to connect them to the next steps.
• Being visual is key. Providing supporting images in addition to verbal descriptions makes it more understandable.
• The struggle of using the app alongside real-world tasks is one of the main concerns in solving this problem.

Secondary Research

We also conducted a literature review on related topics while conducting our primary research to learn more about the problem area.

• Communicating medical probabilities: explaining probabilities with numbers instead of words could avoid misinterpretation. Visual aids can help by showing numbers in perspective
• Designing for non-native English speakers: using appropriate visual aids will help patients from all backgrounds to understand the explanations
• Considerations in a doctor's diagnosis include: patient history, physical exam, signs and symptoms, and the prevalence

Interaction Concepting

Our central goal with the DeDX feature was to help users make more confident recommendations based on test results and supporting data. We looked at external examples and sketched out our ideas of different ways to support confidence in results. Here are some sketches and themes that came out from the interaction concepting include:

• Priority of content: the level of detail shown to the user on each page
• Data Display: use of visuals/texts/numbers to help understand the result
• Transparency: showing what the system knows and doesn't know to build trust
• Strength/Tiered language of recommendation: providing the clear next steps

Design

We stepped into the design phase informed by everything we learned from the discovery phase. We started with wireframe iterations and finished the design phase with visual comps of some key screens of the DeDX feature.

Wireframes

Visual Comps

Future Directions

• Scalability for use across different disease
• Versatility for use across diverse environments
• Tracking patient data over time: We found that tracking patient data would help healthcare providers remind them of the next steps and follow-up testing.
• Answering frequently asked questions: Easy access to answers to frequently asked questions is essential for eliminating frustrations and providing information where the users are. The goal is to support the CHWs and the patients instead of slowing their process down.
• Soothing patient anxiety: The patient's emotional state can affect the testing process, posing additional challenges to administrators. Exploring ways to help with soothing the patient's anxiety is one of the opportunities for improvement.

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