Background
Rural regions across the US are not densely populated enough to get telecom companies to invest in building the infrastructure to serve them, resulting in limited access to more cost-effective and higher-quality care. We partnered with a satellite company to bring internet connectivity to rural America and implement a new telehealth standard.
research
We traveled across America to interview doctors and patients in rural areas to understand their experiences and needs within the current healthcare setup. We took these 14 interviews and synthesized them together to help us identify themes and insights to allow us to frame our design.
One such insight was:
In the world of healthcare, cash is king.
“We have focused on paying for stuff, not for getting outcomes. And ultimately, that’s really the heart our national health care policy or national health care provision of care should be about providing things that we know have value and not paying for things that don’t.” - Dr. Johnson, 54
ideation
With these insights in our back pocket, we used some ideation methods, such as Big Business and Insight-Trend Combination, to innovate new ideas. After discussion and a dot vote, we created storyboards to further understand how this idea would work in real life.
One of these ideas, noted in the storyboard, is the idea for a booth healthcare system that can be set up in local communities. Through blood sample data and questionnaires the user can keep up on their healthcare without having to travel to see a doctor in person. The system would show you your total cost throughout the “visit” as well as any prescriptions you might need. Setting up these booth healthcare systems within local community gathering points will maintain the community and camaraderie that rural areas value.
our solution
We turned a few of our top ideas, such as the story board above, into high fidelity wireframes that we could test with users and showcase to stakeholders.
