May 2010 - May 2012
Zava Telehealth
Situation
Zava is a leading telemedical (health delivered with digital technology) healthcare provider. Established in 2011, Zava carries out 5 million consultations annually across the UK, German, Ireland, and France.
Zava saw an opportunity to pilot a remote service and grow their offering, when a telehealth trial was launched in Berlin in 2019. In 2019, Zava commissioned myself and a product team to discover a telehealth product fit in the German market.
Our challenge was to explore how we can connect patients with doctors in a convenient and efficient way to offer healthcare that is ‘judgement-free’ and free at the point of care.
Tasks
User researchThe first step in finding ‘product fit’ when launching a new service for Zava was in discovering how the different patient groups think about using a ‘digital first’ health service in Germany. We were already aware of the challenges in German law, its bureaucracy (many transactions in health and banking are paper based), and how people in general perceive digital privacy risks. We had first hand knowledge of this within our multi-national product team, the team’s Researcher and Product Manager were German with recent lived experiences.We planned a series of sprints which consisted of user interviews leading to concept prototype testing to discover which patient groups to focus on and help shape the product and marketing of this new service. Research methods such as experience mapping, interviews, competitive landscape research, and value proposition were activities involved in this process.
- We needed to understand who was presently supplying telehealth services to patients in the UK and Germany.
- We chose to look at the UK first since digital health was already a in a strong mature state.
- We aimed to learn what works for patients in the UK which could help us when researching what works for German patients.
- The 6 products I reviewed offered insights on features we planned to deliver and more.
- Features such as booking appointments, patient triage or some kind of assessment, receiving treatment via a synchronous (chat or video) channel, medical reference, medical records, data preferences, symptom checker.
- Our overall goal was to learn where in the patient journey, how they were being used and what the patient experience was like, good or bad.
I added the findings from this landscape analysis to our map to potentially see what there patient experience looked like. This helped us see how we can meet those other products and exceed what they deliver.
Actions
Our approach to discovering what needs there are for a digital first health service was important that we had the right team, mindset, and experience to broaden our research and move fast, since we had a set time frame.- Diversify the team with a mix of disciplines and experiences, genders, and ages.
- Invite our users into the team to share their ‘lived experience’ and co-create ideas.
- Get up close with our users to check where our ideas can add value to people’s lives.
- Map our users' lives and use that map as our Product Roadmap.
- Map out the future of our service and explore where our co-design ideas fit in that map.
- Discover and co-create ideas to bridge any gaps between current and future experiences
Results
At launch the app gave patients 24hr access to a remote doctors service. Users could choose their doctor based on experience, skills, gender, and availability.- The app that provided video consultation services to people in Germany throughout 2020–2021.
- Remote video consultation experience was applauded by users giving it 4 stars in the app star.
- The app gave users the chance to learn about their condition with a library of conditions that Zava doctors could treat.
- The biggest win for German patients was when the then paper sick notes, a big pain point for ill patients having to acquire a paper sick note to prove their illness to their employer, were made digital and delivered directly to employers and pharmacies through the app.