User Researcher
Generative Research for Healthcare
EHRs and the push towards digital have been a growing theme in healthcare.
Context and Goals
With the COVID-19 pandemic we saw an opportunity to help with digitization during a time when being in-person wasn't always feasible. A key vertical struggling to do this was healthcare, which we knew still relied on paper and fax despite major efforts to digitize healthcare, such as the HITECH Act which pushed for electronic healthcare record adoption
While initial use cases were unclear, we knew that EHRs would play a pivotal role.
Method
Much of this research was done during the COVID-19 pandemic so in-person research was not possible. Given the constraints we did in-depth interviews (IDIs) and surveys. We also worked with marketing and business development to ensure we did complimentary work. Marketing and business development covered TAM (total addressable market) and SAM (serviceable addressable market) analyses and looked at the patient experience from a very high level.
UX research focused on understanding the pain points using EHRs as related to getting signatures, the needs and expectations of decision makers, and technical feasibility from EHR experts.
Insights
From these interviews we learned about the feasibility of and the inherent the problems, of integrating with EHRs, the expectations of decision makers, and key use cases we could add value in. This helped us develop product concepts and vignettes centered around specific use cases that we found fit with our current product offerings. We used a survey to get directional support to gauge whether the envisioned solution will address a real problem people perceived as important.
When it came to gauging this, we felt it was important to go to the people who worked in these use cases the most--physicians, nurses, front-desk/patient in-take, and IT personnel. They have the most patient interactions and/or deal with EHRs the most. The survey results validated the level investment and vision of the product.
It also validated ideas another team had for improving our eSigning document preparation experience. An unintended outcome of my work but one that came from the cross team collaboration and insights sharing that the Docusign UX research team promotes
Actions taken
From these various research efforts and work channels, we had a greater grasp of the space and showed us where we could add value. We then used a build, buy and partner framework to determine our strategy. It was clear that not everything needed to be built, some things could be bought or utilized by partnering with the right companies, and also helped us to see that some things didn't require us to address at all.
Fueled by the research insights and driven by the business development and product team, Docusign worked towards a new partnership with Infor Cloverleaf, a leading EHR interoperability solution, to boost our presence and value in the healthcare industry.
On July 2023, DocuSign announces a partnership with Infor Cloverleaf