UX/UI

HIPAA Compliant Scheduled Messages

Rhinogram

Project Background

Rhinogram is a HIPAA-compliant patient engagement platform designed to streamline communication between patients and healthcare providers. The platform facilitates secure virtual visits without requiring patients to download an app, offering a seamless and intuitive user-experience. Serving over 13.5 million patients nationwide, Rhinogram provides a secure care solution tailored to modern healthcare needs.

Healthcare practices often face challenges such as managing inbound calls, scheduling appointments, handling cancellations, and ensuring efficient patient care. Rhinogram effectively addresses these issues by enabling more convenient, precise, and efficient communication. Practices leveraging Rhinogram’s platform experience, on average, a 30% increase in the number of patients treated, driving both operational efficiency and practice growth.

My Role

As the UX Product Lead, I needed to understand the problem and determine the most effective solution. To do so, I needed to assess how prevalent this issue was among physicians and identify the potential impact on other user groups. Gathering quantitative data was important to determine the number of organizations that would benefit from addressing this problem and evaluate the scale of its impact.

Additionally, I looked to understand how frequently the group would use this feature. This insight was critical not only for validating the need for the solution but also for anticipating potential system performance issues. For example, if the feature led to a significant increase in outbound queue usage, it could risk overloading our system and hurting performance. By conducting this analysis, I aimed to determine that a solution was both impactful and sustainable, aligning with the technical capabilities of our platform while addressing the needs of our users.

Problem

Physicians frequently find themselves constrained by time, necessitating communication with patients outside of regular office hours. This practice, while essential for ensuring patient care, can inadvertently prompt patients to respond during off hours, creating a cycle of off-duty communication that disrupts the physicians’ work-life balance. The growing demand for timely responses from patients compounds this challenge, as physicians strive to maintain boundaries while still providing quality care and maintaining open lines of communication.

UNDERSTANDING THE PROBLEM

I sent out a quick in app survey to our entire user base.

 

Scheduled Message Feature Survey

    1. Would you find a feature to draft a text and schedule it to be sent at a later time and or date to be helpful?
      • Yes
      • No
    2. If yes, how frequently would you estimate using the scheduled message feature?
      • Daily
      • Weekly
      • Monthly
      • Rarely
    3. What specific scenarios or use cases would you see yourself utilizing a scheduled message feature?

There was a very important use case that came out of the survey that I had not considered.

  • Currently organizations that are not integrated with their EHR have no way of sending text reminders for upcoming appointments.
  • Scheduled messages would allow those organizations to look a upcoming appointments in their EHR and then manually schedule those texts to go out as reminders.
  • Many of our smaller practices are not integrated so this use case could be used by roughly 60% of our organizations.
70

Users answered the survey

93%

Said YES it would be helpful

58%

Daily

32%

Weekly

10%

Monthly

COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS

How do competitors handle similar issues?

I conducted a comprehensive analysis of how multiple competitors implemented scheduled messaging features. This included examining their UI, iconography, and complementary features. The goal was to identify best practices and uncover opportunities to incorporate intuitive design patterns and enhancements that could elevate the user experience within our product. Taking these insights, I was able to recommend design elements that aligned with user expectations while offering improvements tailored to our unique platform.

LOW FIDELITY

In the early stages of design, I focused on mapping out the user workflow (Fig 1) and creating initial sketches to map out all the screens impacted by the feature (Fig 2). This process was crucial for understanding the full scope of the UI and identifying all relevant workflows.

Fig 1: User workflow for scheduled text messages
Fig 2: Initial sketches to understand UI scope
Fig 3: Wires for user flow

ITERATION

Given Rhinogram’s role-based system with varying user permissions, it was essential to account for the unique workflows associated with each user type. This approach ensured that the feature design addressed the needs of all users while maintaining alignment with the platform’s structure and functionality.

PROTOTYPING FOR TESTING

Iterations from Testing

We conducted prototype testing with a user group comprising 10 healthcare providers. The feedback gathered during these sessions allowed us to refine several interactions to make them more intuitive and user-friendly. Additionally, the testing surfaced a valuable feature enhancement: the option to “Repeat” a message. This functionality, introduced based on provider input, was designed to streamline communication with patient groups by enabling consistent, recurring messaging. This iteration enhanced overall usability and addresses additional use cases.

123

MVP and PHASE 2

Feature prioritization was essential to delivering functionality that addresses the majority of our user needs while adhering to project timelines and resource constraints. Our approach focuses on identifying and implementing features that satisfy 80% of the most common use cases, ensuring the core functionality was impactful from the start. (Fig 4)

By concentrating on high-priority features, delivered value quickly, allowing users to benefit from the feature sooner and providing the opportunity to gather feedback for refinement. To manage additional use cases and complex functionality, we broke the project into MVP and additional phases.

Fig 4: Features prioritized for MVP

Phase 2 would include:

  • Admin page for admins to take actions with all Scheduled Messages for an organization.
    • If an employee is absent or leaves this enables the admin to handle messages without having to login to their account.
  • Incorporate Scheduled Messages into the application conversation messaging analytics.

RESULTS

Development of the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) for this feature was executed in 3 sprints, enabling efficient progress and ensuring we stayed aligned with our timeline. Confident in the demand and necessity for the feature, we launched it across all organizations. To support the rollout, I created a multi-step Pendo guide that provided users with an interactive walkthrough of the new functionality. This proactive approach significantly reduced the volume of inquiries to the support team.

The results were highly encouraging: within 30 days

  • 78% of all organizations had utilized the scheduled messaging feature.

  • By 60 days, scheduled messages accounted for 12% of all messages sent.

  • 7 point increase in our Net Promoter Score (NPS), reflecting its positive impact on user satisfaction.

  • The feature continues to receive consistent praise from users, reinforcing its success as a valuable addition to our platform.