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Erik Zimmerman
HealingHand Tech
is an early stage startup offering at-home rehabilitation for stroke survivors. The product suite leverages medical technology, including a wearable and gamified exercise intervention to provide end-to-end treatment.
Impact
Therapist Productivity
Achieved a 20% boost in therapist efficiency compared to traditional exercise programs, allowing them to treat more patients concurrently
Competitive Edge
HealingHand Tech is 40% more likely to be chosen by therapists over similar medical technologies due to its integration with existing workflows
Safety Assurance
Therapists felt 83% more confidence in patient safety compared to other at-home interventions, thanks to innovative monitoring features
Streamlined Development
Collaborated with the game design and mobile UX teams to implement the Material 3 design system, decreasing development time by up to 60%
Intro
HealingHand Tech is an innovative healthcare startup dedicated to improving upper limb function for stroke survivors. The product incorporates a gamified mobile app for enjoyable exercising and a wearable for real-time feedback.
I led the design of the clinician portal, where therapists manage these patients and their treatment program. It employs specialized tools for building exercise programs, progress tracking, and remote therapeutic monitoring to make providing effective treatment easier.
Our Problem
In remote therapy, the connection between therapists and patients is vital to successful treatment. This presents challenges including efficient patient management, safety concerns, and making effective care plans outside clinic visits.
Key Challenges
The following challenges were addressed to improve therapist-patient interaction. A remote setting was focused on because of its unique complications. Success here would likely translate well to outpatient and inpatient settings.
Patient Management
Help therapists manage multiple patients efficiently
Patient Safety
Feel confident that patients are safe while exercising
Personalized Exercises
Ensure that exercise activities are engaging, appropriate, and useful
Progress Tracking
Provide real-time feedback, data insights, and tracking on patient exercises
User Interviews
It was essential to understand how therapy works for patients with neurological conditions from initial evaluation to discharge.
An added challenge was understanding how treatment changes in different clinical settings among various types of therapists.
Initially, it wasn’t clear who to recruit or what questions needed answers. The research plan adjusted as 16 therapists were interviewed and the primary user was uncovered, an Occupational Therapist (OT). See more research in the pitch deck.
Information Architecture
Backed with research insights, I worked with stakeholders to map out the portal sections and planned features. This framed the scope of the work and aided with assigning out design tasks.
Key Challenge 1
Patient Management
In teletherapy, effective communication of patient status is crucial. The homepage highlights ongoing patient activities to support quick reactions to patient needs.
Integration with existing workflows was a key adoption strategy. This was achieved through incremental onboarding, a smart phrase feature, and easy documentation transfer.
The alerts feed tells the therapist what requires their immediate attention. They are color coded to indicate urgency and can quickly be resolved with a click.
Higher program compliance translates to better outcomes. Low compliance signals the therapist to work with them to find a solution through education, program adjustment, or a different intervention.
The messages feed closes the gap between alerts and not as urgent patient questions and concerns.
Key Challenge 2
Patient Safety
In a remote setting, feeling confident that the patient is safe is paramount. Severe pain can lead to an increase in blood pressure and result in fainting.
A focus on safety led to the “Break Triggering Moment” (BTM) feature. This is when the patient is forced to stop playing due to an elevated pain or fatigue level.
When severe pain reported, the triggering activity is disabled. An urgent alert is sent that must be resolved before exercise can continue.
Pain reports are visualized over time by activity to help the therapist make adjustments to the program before a BTM occurs.
The patient reports their fatigue level when the wearable detects abnormal movement, prompting adjustment to program parameters.
Key Challenge 3
Personalized Exercises
Building an exercise program is a cognitively demanding task that involves selecting appropriate activities, determining their order, and setting parameters.
The product offers two types of activities: Isolated movements for patients with limited function to practice the basics. Combined movements for higher-functioning patients, that simulate functional tasks like dressing.
Using a navigation pattern for activity management allows therapists to focus on one exercise at a time and go back as needed.
Instructional videos of a person doing the exercise along with the gameplay helps therapists decide if it’s appropriate for the patient.
Every exercise has notes for the therapist to communicate specific details based on how the patient presents and their needs.
The parameters are designed around our gamified context. Duration replaces sets and reps because it’s easier to implement in game design.
Key Challenge 4
Progress Tracking
Tracking patient progress relies on wearable and self-reported data. It was important to question the utility of data visualizations in the context of does this help the therapist take action to improve on treatment?
The assumption was examining multiple data points would provide a bigger picture. For example, a low fatigue combined with high success rate might signify the exercises are too easy, necessitating a program upgrade.
Visualizing improvements in the patient’s active range of motion is important to understanding the interventions effectiveness. Taken from Neofect, this provides a snapshot of movement function in accordance with their exercise program.
Mood is self-reported by the patient in the app and is an important data point relative to compliance. Consistently negative mood reports may prompt the therapist to check-in with them to ensure satisfaction with their treatment.
User Testing
Participants included 6 Occupational Therapists that work in an outpatient setting, with a focus on the stroke population. Experience with telehealth was preferred, but not mandatory since remote therapy with stroke patients is presently uncommon.
The majority of the usability test focused on two, key flows: patient onboarding and the exercise program builder.
Patient Onboarding
Research indicated that setting up the intervention with patients is a major problem therapists have with new medical technology.
Since therapists typically have hour-long sessions with various other tasks, an incremental onboarding process that could occur over multiple visits was needed.
During testing, it was important to analyze the process’s efficiency to ensure optimization of the subtask pattern.
Program Builder A vs. B
The exercise program builder is central to the clinician portal. Involving over 40 inputs, ensuring its intuitive for therapists required special attention. Two versions of the program builder were designed and tested with six participants to gather usability insights.
A
follows the conventional, Home Exercise Program (HEP) approach, aligned with the OT mental model for creating exercise programs.
B
is an innovative, goal-based approach, using the stakeholder framework for program creation.
Usability Insights
The design team was surprised that 83% of participants favored builder B. Despite being unconventional, it made sense because of the time saved by tying goals to exercises.
"I liked the template aspect of the A version, but I thought B was a bit more efficient. It’s nice how goals relate to the exercises, but what if the patient has one that isn't supported here?"
Test Participant 5
Outpatient OT
Insight 1
Custom Programs
Therapists like having the flexibility to create custom programs for goals outside the included ADL categories (hygiene, dressing, feeding).
While combined movement games are designed around these categories, a selection of isolated movements can support unique goals like golfing.
Insight 2
Program Templates
OTs often give their patients similar programs with personalization happening through small adjustments to activities and their parameters.
In support, a template feature was added to builder B, allowing therapists to save, share, and reuse custom programs.
Next Steps
Ultimately, the product's success hinges on the games' ability to improve function while offering enjoyable gameplay. Thanks to my leadership and the team's dedication, development of the clinician portal is significantly ahead of the mobile app and wearable.
I've been urging the game and mobile UX teams to concentrate on creating a complete exercise flow for comprehensive testing. This will enable the gathering of crucial therapist feedback regarding gameplay and wearable ease of use.
Conclusion
Leading the design of HealingHand’s clinician portal was transformative. Managing the UX/UI, research, project coordination, and collaborating with the game and mobile teams required diverse skills and effective communication.
One of the biggest challenges I faced was bridging the gap between the startup's vision and the user's mental model. Balancing stakeholder desires for innovation with user research insights, which sometimes conflicted, demanded careful negotiation and advocacy for user-centered design principles.
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