Pharmacy Chat Service

A mid-fi mockup prototype to improve the patient experience at local pharmacies.

Project Overview

I created a pharmacy contact tool for patients that experience long wait times at pharmacies, have difficulty contacting pharmacies, and other general common issues at pharmacies. The Pharmacy Chat Service allows patients to find the pharmacy of their choice, view current wait times, and contact a pharmacy representative for any inquiries.

TYPE
MID FIDELITY PROTOTYPE

ROLE
UX RESEARCHER, UX DESIGNER

TIMELINE
1 MONTH

TOOLS
FIGMA

PROBLEM SPACE

Accessibility to Prescriptions in the United States

The United States is one of the most powerful countries in the world, however, its healthcare system lacks accessible and affordable care for its citizens, especially prescription medications. Pharmaceutical companies have increased listing prices for their medications annually over the last decade, thus increasing frustrations for patients nationwide. In addition, the recent pandemic has increased delays and staffing issues at the frontlines in pharmacies, leading to the diminishing quality of patient care in the US. With the consistent rise in medication prices and understaffing at pharmacies, accessibility has become the forefront issue for patients combating conditions and symptoms only prescriptive medications can alleviate.

SECONDARY RESEARCH

Common Issues at the Pharmacy

Looking through some secondary research articles, there are many sources stating the consistent accessibility issues for prescriptions in the US healthcare system. Numerous articles often describe the frustration that many patients have at the pharmacies with their high, and rising costs as well as long delays and increased wait times. The following findings showcase some key insights from the articles that mention concerning common issues from patients and their experience at pharmacies in the United States.

  • MediFind (2022), “8 Major Problems with the U.S. Healthcare System Today” (1)
    - Prescription drug spending topped $457 billion in 2015, which accounted for 16.7% of personal healthcare service expenditures.
    - Lack of insurance coverage - many health consumers can’t afford the high cost of primary care due to high insurance costs
    - Lack of efficiency - clinical documentation and electronic medical record administration limit a physician’s ability to offer more care

  • CBS News (2022), “Inflation Reduction Act could be "game-changing" for millions of U.S. seniors” (2)
    - In 2019, 1.5 million seniors spent more than $2,000 on prescriptions.
    - 30% of Medicare beneficiaries who face high prices for cancer treatments don't fill their prescriptions.
    - One in 4 diabetes patients has skimped on insulin because of its cost.

  • U.S. News (2021), “The Maddeningly High Price of Prescription Drugs” (3)
    - Prescription drug prices are a consistent source of frustration and anger among patient-consumers.
    - Insurance may well cover a particular medication, but since the co-pay is based on the original manufacturers' price – and not the lower, negotiated cost – the patient ends up paying more.

  • Bloomberg (2022), “Why Prescription Drug Prices in the US Are So High” (4)
    - Insurance is the primary payer of medications, thus patients who are without insurance may have serious issues paying for the help they need.
    - Americans spend more on prescription drugs - average costs are about $1,300 per person per year - than anyone else in the world.
    - Drugmakers continue to steadily raise list prices by around 5% a year.

  • NBC News (2021), “The latest worker shortage may affect your health” (5)
    - The worker shortage has led to dayslong waits for medication, shortened pharmacy hours, and some prescription errors and mixups.
    - Pharmacies unable to keep up with staffing and pay led to some stores running behind on prescriptions, often with several hundred waiting to be filled each morning.

  • Through this case study, consideration of the process and issues patients face regarding prescriptions will be examined in order to acknowledge and understand the pain points of obtaining medications. Objectives for this study include:

    • Understanding the general attitudes towards prescriptions and medication pick up at pharmacies

    • Understanding how patients pay for medications

    • Recognize common pain points patients undergo at a pharmacy

    • Recognize any trends/patterns from patient motivators, behaviors, and pain points surrounding pharmacies and prescriptions

    • Notate common themes for possible design decisions and future solutions

    Realizing any ongoing patient frustrations, financial pressures, and current solutions for solving these issues within the US healthcare system, the process of obtaining critical care and prescriptions will surely improve through advancements in technology and reforming processes. By conducting primary research, further growth within the technology sector will hopefully ease the process of obtaining prescriptions from medical providers and picking up medications from pharmacies.

  • I believe that providing resources for information on cost rates, savings programs, and accessible pharmacies for patients with medication needs will improve the experience of frequent pharmacy visits.

    I know this is true when I see an increase in patients picking up their prescriptions by 20% and frustrations in finding affordable prescriptions and pharmacies have eased.

  • User interviews will be conducted during this case study in order to receive feedback and collect concerning issues from the general public regarding prescription medications. With the conduction of user interviews as a primary research source, direct concerns will be translated into a research design study in order to address trends and patterned pain points from these users through the affinity mapping tool. The design process will include ideating with brainstorming and mapping out the potential task flow, wireframing, low-fidelity prototyping, user testing, drawing insights from user testing, implementing trends and patterns received from user testing, and building out the high-fidelity prototype. Afterward, a final round of user testing to consider any key highlights and criticisms received will be considered in future rounds of implementation.

    • Age between 18 - 40

    • Location: United States

    • Occupation: Student or Working Class individual

    • Insurance: insured OR non-insured patients eligible

    • Must have seen a provider that has prescribed a medication in the last 2 years

    • Has visited and picked up a prescription at a pharmacy in the US in the last 2 years

PRIMARY RESEARCH

User Interviews + Themes

Interviews were conducted with 3 participants that fit the participant criteria listed above and key insights were sorted and organized into themes:

The chosen theme to move further with a design intervention was decided based on the number of key insights pulled from the user interviews and the opportunity to create a strong and effective solution.

Chosen theme:

HOW MIGHT WE

How might we minimize wait times for patients in pharmacies in order to decrease delays in obtaining medication?

PERSONA

Introducing “On-The-Go” Olivia…

USER STORIES

Stepping into Olivia’s shoes

From the persona created, user stories are created to come up with potential user tasks and goals while visiting a pharmacy that focuses on saving time and being efficient.

After reviewing all the epics, the chosen epic to move forward with a design intervention was reducing wait times.

TASK FLOW DIAGRAM

Journey through navigating the pharmacy chat

Depicted below is a task flow diagram that translates the previous user stories into a main task flow to prevent long wait times at the pharmacy for our persona, Olivia.

Scenario: In this task flow, Olivia is stuck at work writing a critical piece for her newspaper, however, she is low on her anxiety medications. She wants to check her local pharmacy chain that typically fills her medication at (CVS, for example - one that all utilizes the same medical record system) to see which has the shortest wait time so she can take her medication ASAP and get back to work with eased-up anxiety:

EXPLORATORY + SOLUTION SKETCH

Organizing the UI

After exploring some UI elements through some inspiration, a few sketches were drawn up and put together to decide on the most impactful elements to pull together a solution sketch.

EXPLORATORY SKETCHES

SOLUTION SKETCH

MID-FIDELITY PROTOTYPE

Pulling it all together…

Using the solution sketch as an outline and composing it together on Figma led me to create a few iterations, and below is the most recent iteration of the prototype.