Progress Owl

Problem

Clinical research shows that utilizing Patient-Reported Outcomes (information provided directly by patients about their state of health) serves an impactful role in the perceived care a patient receives. UPMC has historically poor Patient-Reported Outcome (PRO) engagement with both patients and staff.

How might we enable UPMC patients and clinical staff to capture the benefits of Patient-Reported Outcomes?

Solution

Progress Owl is a web-based application that provides patients with access, transparency, and insight of their PRO data, empowering them to engage in shared-decision making conversations with their care team around PROs.

Role

As Progress Owl's product designer, I was in charge of researching the PRO use case, validating the problem areas at UPMC, prototyping solutions, and overseeing the design handoff to production.

Process

Contextual Inquiry
The flow of PROs is a bit different at each facility, so to understand the variety in which clinics discuss, facilitate, store, and utilize PROs, I shadowed 4 UPMC clinic directors responsible for the highest volume of PROs. This research revealed that while clinics were actively collecting PROs, none of them were utilizing the data to inform care - in extreme cases, the collected PROs were shoved away in a locked room filled with seemingly endless filling cabinets.

Narrowing and Wireframing
The concept of Progress Owl was born out of the pain point in the current state that patient's had no access or visibility into their PRO data, creating information asymmetry that prevented them from participating in shared-decision making conversations.

A few of the key features that I designed, tested, and validated include a chatbot-like PRO experience, a personal PRO dashboard with tracking and comparison data, as well as a clinical dashboard that helped providers discuss PROs with patients in a consumable way.

Stakeholder Interviews
To understand how patient-reported outcomes were currently being utilized throughout the system, I interviewed 12-15 stakeholders with the goal of mapping the current state of PROs at UPMC. The iterative process of creating an current state artifact for stakeholders to interact with helped refine the mapping and quickly align many stakeholders.

Progress Owl is being piloted at two UPMC physical therapy clinics and in contention for UPMC's solution of choice for a system-wide initiative to consolidate the collection of PROs.

Outcomes