Medimatch

Designing an app to solve clinic queueing time and patient loads.
‍
Role:
User Research, Ideation, Wireframing (Mobile), Pitching

Tools used:
Google Surveys, Adobe XD, Zoom

Project timeline:
Weekend of 23-25th April

Introduction

Queueing is a thing in sunny Singapore, where I hail from. Be it lining up for a spanking new food outlet, branded luxury store, or even to see a doctor, Singaporeans seem to take it in stride despite the humidity and heat.

It was precisely this third form of queueing that my team and I wanted to examine over the weekend of the 2021 SWSG Hackathon- partly due to the COVID-19 situation, but also, from my own healthcare experience, to help deal with burnout experienced by healthcare professionals who have to handle high patient loads.

Research

We started by conducting desk research and conducting a quick google survey. Here were our findings:

Our results showed that more than two-thirds of surveyed users (67.7%) had to wait more than half an hour to see a doctor, with more than half (55.9%) uncomfortable waiting at a clinic for any given amount of time.

When asked why they were uncomfortable to wait on-site, here were some of the responses:

“My immunity is low, and I might catch something from others in the clinic who are sick. Also, it is often very loud and bright”

“Full of Germs from other sick people”

“I feel it’s a waste of time”

‍We pulled data from data.gov.sg, the Singapore Government’s statistics site, and found that another compounding issue to the problem we discovered was the rising number in clinic attendees over the years.

What we learned from our research:

Users were uncomfortable waiting for medical attention at clinics because this meant being exposed to other people, which resulted in a greater risk of transmission.

This problem was further aggravated with the COVID-19 pandemic, and the increasing number of clinic visits year-on-year.

The problem

With all this in mind, our Team came up with a problem statement:

“How might we help patients in need obtain medical attention more efficiently?”

‍We then conducted a competitive analysis to determine where opportunities lay:

After looking at current solutions to the problem, we found that there was a unique space for a solution that provided tailored information to User in the space of face-to-face doctor consultations.

Persona

To help us better empathise with the User, our team created a User Persona, Jimmy, a tech-savvy father of two.

Ideation

Hence, we came up with the idea for Medimatch- an app that helped users find clinics while reducing queue time.

Some of the features we wanted to include for Medimatch to help it stand out included:

A filter function to allow Users to select their choice of clinics and doctors based on speciality
A greater detail of information available on the app itself, to help better inform users.
And an online e-queueing system replete with the option to set alerts, to help Users reduce time spent waiting at clinics.

Wireframes and Prototypes

We then did up the wireframes and prototypes to show how Jimmy would navigate the app, making his choice of clinic and even enabling him to queue from the comfort of his own home.

After reviewing our wireframes- we then proceeded to do mockups and a basic user flow:

What I learned:

As this project was run over the course of a weekend, there were certain things our team had to trim away, such as the option to add in a transport guide.

I’ve also learnt that bringing an idea to reality does have its fair share of challenges- as part of pitching the idea to judges during the finals, we were challenged to explain how we would pull clinic queue data, and also had our business model thoroughly examined.

Fortunately, we had team members from appropriate disciplines to help iron out those kinks.

Conclusion

As the world adjusts to the COVID-19 pandemic, it is clear that there will be a need for ideas to better manage patient load, and we believe Medimatch is one such idea.

Unfortunately, we did not have time to conduct usability testing due to limited time. My plan moving forwards is to conduct usability testing, and likely look for ways to bring this app to fruition.