As the use of health apps among the general population continues to grow, medical device developers are beginning to look to companion apps to tackle the challenge of poor adherence, improve patient experience and ultimately improve healthcare outcomes. Paul Greenhalgh and Ben Cox at Team Consulting describes how using behavioural design theories and applying UX design principles, can help lower the barrier to adoption of new technologies, whilst ultimately enabling new tools to support patient adherence.
Extract:
‘Smart Packaging for Smart Devices: Designing a Good User Experience’
As the use of health apps among the general population continues to grow, medical device developers are beginning to look to companion apps to tackle the challenge of poor adherence, improve patient experience and ultimately improve healthcare outcomes. These apps are typically paired with a physical device, allowing users to track their symptoms and dose history, access key information and generally provide support as they manage their condition.
While the benefits of companion apps may seem clear, convincing users to engage with them can however be challenging. As medical devices become smarter and incorporate new connected technology, users are required to not only learn how to use the physical device, but also to download and pair it and sign up to sharing their data. The fact that connectivity may be an add-on to an existing platform device, which can function both with and without it, only increases the challenge of engaging users with the full digital experience.
Apps themselves can be an effective tool in onboarding a patient to a new therapy, however you first need to help your user to download and engage with them. Fortunately, designers have options to utilise different elements of the product ecosystem to prompt and encourage desired user behaviours. One of the first of these elements that a patient will interact with is packaging.
Packaging provides us with a golden opportunity to introduce users to a new device. As the first physical touchpoint they will have with a product, it can be used to convey key information and prompts to help users set up and use their device safely and effectively. As we begin to introduce new connected technology to devices, packaging also offers an opportunity to guide users towards companion apps and can be viewed as the first step in digitally onboarding them.
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