Understanding Your Primary User
Understanding the primary user of a telehealth application is the key to building a successful user interface (UI) design. UI design is the process of creating an interface enabling users to utilize a software product, like healthcare applications. The goal of a user-centric design is to build an interface that is informative and easy to navigate, ensuring the user has a positive experience with the platform.
When developing a telehealth solution, understanding the patients who will be the primary users is essential. Unless the platform is for a highly-specialized field, patients can include most of the population, covering countless demographics. Ensuring that the software is developed without dismissing any patients is a challenge, as they have different levels of comprehension and experience with technology.
To build a patient-centric healthcare platform, healthcare organizations and development teams must determine what the “better patient” represents. Typically, this patient is a part of the healthier populations, is health conscious, and is often well-informed of their health data. Knowing these patients’ actions, healthcare tools can then be sculpted in a way that supports patients in caring for themselves.
Patient-centric design can encourage patients to take a more active role in their health by allowing them more control and ownership of their medical data. However, it can also benefit the healthcare sector by reducing the burden of care on providers and relieving the overall costs of the healthcare system.
The Extensive Advantages of Telehealth for Patients
Telehealth is an incredible tool for patients and providers alike. Here are just a few examples of the advantages patients can experience when utilizing telehealth services.
Accessibility and Inclusivity
Telehealth technology has gone a long way in making healthcare services available to the wider population, including those in underserved communities. For example, rural communities experience a significant barrier to receiving healthcare, especially specialized services. When patients can access the care needed from the comfort of their homes, they are more likely to seek out care before it becomes a serious issue.
Many patients can also experience barriers to receiving in-person healthcare for reasons such as physical limitations, language barriers, and hearing disorders. Telehealth services allow patients to seek healthcare from providers who can accommodate any limitations they may experience. This encourages patients to seek healthcare services in a way that gives them control over their care.
Expedited Access to Healthcare Services
Scheduling appointments for in-person care is something many patients procrastinate. Oftentimes, doctors’ appointments can take up hours of a work day, including a significant commute, and are typically scheduled months in advance. All of this, on top of working out health insurance, can make scheduling appointments a chore that many patients will put off until their condition becomes a serious concern.
Telehealth technology allows patients to schedule appointments online, giving them the time and ownership to carefully select a time that works best for their schedule and see when the soonest appointments available are. Also, with the number of healthcare services that can be provided through a telemedicine application, patients can remove the commute of their day and attend appointments from home. Lastly, telehealth services can be provided by healthcare providers outside of a patient’s local area, meaning they can schedule an appointment sooner than if they had to rely on in-person visits only.
Enhanced Care for Non-Critical, At-Risk Patients
Remote patient monitoring tools have allowed healthcare professionals to closely monitor at-risk patients without requiring frequent in-person visits. Using wearable devices and telemedicine technology, providers can monitor a patient’s vital signs, sleep patterns, and activity levels. These tools let patients limit the amount of time spent in a healthcare facility while alerting healthcare providers of any sudden changes in a patient’s condition.
Comprehensive Holistic Care
Holistic care refers to the care for a person’s complete health and all the encompassing factors that contribute to someone’s health. This includes a better healthcare system, such as mental health services, dental care, and access to nutrition resources.
Holistic care is often difficult to achieve due to access barriers and socioeconomic factors, like access to transportation, health insurance, and local healthcare providers. Healthcare applications are helping patients achieve comprehensive, holistic patient care by offering these services through a telemedicine platform, meaning patients can access care at a time and place convenient to them.
Key Principles for Designing Telehealth Interfaces for Patients
Knowing how patients use telehealth services and technology, let’s take a look at the key principles of the design process that software development teams need to consider when building a healthcare UI design and what makes user interface design important.
Trust and Security
Healthcare apps manage highly sensitive, private patient information that must be protected through various compliance laws and regulations. For a patient to actively use the telehealth app for their healthcare needs, the user interface design must make the patient confident in the security of the platform.
Since the patient isn’t visiting with medical professionals in person, there must be a human element to the design and setup. Ensuring the patient can clearly navigate virtual appointments and securely communicate with providers through video conferencing and instant messaging is essential.
Familiarity and Relevance
When approaching unfamiliar healthcare applications, patients want to have confidence that they can navigate them with ease. This can be achieved by using familiar language and basing the user interface design on existing mental models. This ensures patients don’t have to learn a completely new concept or layout when accessing something as essential as healthcare.
When working on the user interface design, avoid any technical or medical jargon when possible to keep the language patient-friendly. Also, focus on keeping the layout as minimalist as possible to reduce the amount of unnecessary information a patient has to process.
Accessibility
The users for healthcare applications include an expansive patient pool with diverse backgrounds from age, race, language, and technological expertise. Building a platform that accommodates all demographics can be a challenge, but one that experienced software development teams are prepared for.
A successful UI design for telehealth solutions will also be accommodating for any physical limitations patients may experience that could hinder traditional medical services. Building a UI design that allows patients with hearing loss, sensory issues, or low vision to clearly navigate will ensure the telehealth platform is accessible for as many patients as possible.
User Experience
A positive user experience is the result of a well-planned, successful, and user-centric design. Another essential component of a positive user experience is the responsiveness of the telehealth app. Building a user interface design that confirms the user’s action lets them know that they are successfully navigating the platform.
Users expect to receive informative feedback for every action they take, such as a button turning a darker color after being pressed. Another example of this could be a validation message when a form is submitted or when a message is sent.
Geneca is Here to Help
Is your healthcare organization ready to develop a telehealth platform built around its users? Our teams here at Geneca have experience with user interface design and developing healthcare applications, and we’re ready to share our expertise to build your dream solution. Empower patients to take an active role in their care, and reach out to us today for commitment-free consulting!