A cruise through the telemedicine storm with Docplanner crew
By: Katarzyna Adamczyk
Tags: Product Development, Covid 19, UX Research, Telemedicine, UX

Photo by Andreea Swank on Unsplash

Let me bring you into the story about a group of people that were creating an essential product. This group was led by the needs of their users — they knew what their competitors offer and they knew what the expectations of doctors and patients were. In addition to time pressure, there was also the big responsibility of not screwing up. Even if the group had some clue what they should do, it was like they were embarking on a journey in rough seas, with no stars visible in the sky.

I just described the product teams at Docplanner during the start of the pandemic. This whole situation put us, a healthcare startup, in a state of highest readiness. We felt that supporting both doctors & patients in those hard times is our duty, our responsibility. We knew that we had to act really fast. We’re more than used to working in a lean way: experiment, ship fast and check results for the next iteration, but always based on the backbone of proper research, discovery, and definition of goals. At Docplanner, we pay much attention to research– we never start with solutions. But… let’s go back in time and recreate the course of events.

There was a storm

First page from the newspaper. March 2020.

I remember as it was yesterday. Cloudy but quite warm day, it didn’t stand out unusually. We all knew what was going to happen — the situation in China had gone on for 2 months already. But regardless, no one expected it to impact our lives so suddenly and fast. All that was certain was that everything will change and that we have to keep our families and ourselves safe. No one predicted such a course of action.

“It’s hard to imagine what the situation will look like. But if it lasts longer (3–6 months), I’m going to suspend my private practice.” “My plans depend on the general regulations, for sure if the situation gets worse, I will limit private visits.” “I will observe the situation, but I’m rather careful, and I prefer to close the office.”

These quotes were just a drop in the bucket, though. It was clear that big changes were on the way in the medical field, regardless of how essential it is. That was the beginning — beginning of a journey we’ve taken as Docplanner in the past two months. As one of the biggest platforms facilitating patients’ contact with doctors, we had to do something. We felt responsible for supporting our customers in such a difficult situation. Doctors, in large part, had to diametrically change their way of work or completely close their offices for patients. On the other hand, patients’ needs haven’t changed. They still needed help or advice — the only thing that changed was the fear accompanying them.

First harbour — foundations, well-known as a calendar

Way before the pandemic began, we believed in the potential of online consultations. But, as you probably know — there’s always something more urgent to do or fix before you start developing new features. As I mentioned before, you need to do proper research, usability testing, rethink everything in terms of technology.

This pandemic never gave us time for it. So, the whole company turned the system in which we work on a daily basis on its head. There was no time to rethink anything. Only one thing mattered — we had to deliver the solution as fast as we could.

Firstly, we had to:

Give patients a possibility to book online consultations.

Give doctors a possibility to share their schedules for online consultations.

Therefore, we decided that our first step will be to create a calendar dedicated for online consultations. The journey to deliver this calendar wasn’t that long because our crew knew what to do — there were no huge changes. We just had to duplicate our existing solution and change the design, as to make it understandable for users. We also wanted to avoid changes that were too drastic.

Technology aside, there was one more obstacle. Since remote consultations weren’t legal in all of our markets, we were facing some difficulties in compliance with local law. However, our product experts in Brazil cooperated with the government, which after some time decided to legalize online consultations as a result of the outbreak. It was a great success for us that showed how much we can do and pictured the scale we might achieve.

After the first few days of this journey, finally, our developers led us safely to the first port, where we could say “we did it”. The first storm was defeated.

“I’d really prefer to stay at home now. I just needed advice, and with online consultation, I could get it without leaving my house.” “I’ve never used such a service but I’m positively surprised. The doctor helped me and sent me e-prescription, so I’m very satisfied with this online consultation”

Second harbour — payments

The first night was over.

In the morning, everyone knew what our next destination and goal were. Yesterday we succeeded, but it still felt incomplete. We felt like we had built a yacht without sails. It’s nice, but something must be driving it. This was the case of the calendar — our patients finally could book an online consultation but for doctors, collecting and monitoring payments was too time-consuming. Especially in this challenging time, we had to find a way to relieve them.

The solution seems obvious, right? You just have to integrate with some payment system. This is true, but the biggest challenge was to find a proper system that would cover all our markets. Something reliable, simple to use, and reasonably easy to connect with in terms of technology. During the day, two of our teams made sure that the course we took was correct, and during the night watch, they made sure that we wouldn’t encounter any surprises.

This course was definitely one of the most time-consuming journeys. It required many sacrifices and hard work. But, despite all these difficulties, we reached our destination: we implemented a third-party payments solution that allowed users to pay for their visits through a link on our website directly before their online consultation. We knew that it’s far from the end because there were many improvements ahead of us, but we could breathe a sigh of relief. This change really made doctors’ work easier, and patients could safely proceed with payments.

“Payments before the visit are very useful, especially when it comes to first-time patients.” “It’s very helpful and convenient, I don’t have to spend time to see if patients proceed with the payment.”

We just had to verify the real needs and habits of our users, so we could create adequate solutions later and offer them convenient payment options.

Third harbour — Docplanner Video Tool

I’m not sure if we’ve ever been closer to our users than we are right now. Each day we encountered their problems, methods of work, new approaches, fears, and plans. Even though the situation was super difficult, we had opportunities to get to know their deepest needs and issues they were struggling with. Thanks to that knowledge, we weren’t lost anymore. We were no longer on a journey without any light or compass. We knew exactly what direction we should take. We knew what we had to do.

“I was using Skype at first, but I had some difficulties with connection (bad quality), so now I’ve switched to Hangouts or Zoom.” “Sometimes my patients couldn’t find me on Skype via nickname, so I had to write a really long description.” “I guess that Whatsapp lately was overloaded and it was causing some difficulties with the connection.”

We knew that creating a tool which allows doctors and patients to communicate within our service is a must-have — at the beginning, a whole new team was formed just to manage this video project. That kind of feedback that we got above made us realize that we need to act fast, because a video tool is one of the fundamental pieces of online consultations. Does it sound like something impossible to achieve in just a few weeks? In Docplanner, everything that seemed impossible became possible. It’s all due to the engagement of people and sacrifices they did to deliver this functionality.

Of course, we started with an MVP — besides there was no time for advanced solutions, it’s the fastest way to validate if the product will meet users’ needs. Firstly the tool covered just basics: video and microphone. Our priority was to provide a safe, reliable, and convenient solution. Patients no longer had to find doctors on Skype or Whatsapp — they just received a link from the doctor a few minutes before the scheduled appointment. Next, we could think about improving our product — it all came with time. Our users exactly knew what they wanted, missed, or needed.

“I miss some kind of chat where I can write to the patient or they can write to me.” “Some place to take notes from the interview and the whole consultation would be useful.” “I really miss the possibility to share and attach files — it’s not convenient to switch to email during the consultation.”

As product researchers, we’ve heard a bunch of these kinds of suggestions: problems, missing functionalities. We were all new to this product, so doctors caught every opportunity to ask questions. So, actually, we as researchers were also playing the role of IT support or CS. That was really fun.

Besides in-depth interviews, we had a chance to observe the tool from another perspective — seeing how users are struggling in real life and how they use our tool. Then, we could share these insights with other teams. The cooperation was amazing — everyone was isolated, working from the different ends of the world but with one common goal: a goal that we achieved.

I can say that we already delivered most of these missing features and of course, it wouldn’t be possible without people who love their work and stand for what they do, what we do for the world.

“I am really happy that you’re developing video consultations. I’m a huge fan. Firstly, you were some kind of tool for registration, and now you’re becoming our offices.” “I wasn’t convinced to do online consultations, but actually I’ve changed my mind lately. New space, area appeared that until now was closed”.

It’s in these kinds of moments that I’m most proud of being a part of Docplanner. I do believe in our mission and these words only confirm to me the belief that our work matters. We’ve (almost) arrived at the last harbour in one piece.

Fourth harbour — a journey around the world

Is this the moment, when we can take a deep breath because we already delivered everything? Nothing could be more wrong. Our product made sense during the pandemic but we need to keep our eyes open for new needs, behaviors, and situations that might reveal further improvements. Thanks to that we will be able to adapt our product to solve users’ problems and continue this journey. We’ve gotten rich with new experiences and knowledge during these past two months. For sure it will be a bit easier now, but there’s a long way ahead of us. We can compare it to a journey to explore the world — because we don’t know where we’ll finish.

Whether the pandemic will be over soon or not — our video consultations will stay with us. We need to make doctors satisfied with a reliable tool. We need to make sure patients understand how it works. Since now we have some time to drop an anchor and think — that’s exactly what we’re going to do. We’ll go back to the beginning, analyze everything, and keep improving our MVP.

And all of this in one crazy journey through the storm, that surprised us all. This journey with the Docplanner crew was just beautiful. It was a pleasure to be in the middle of a cyclone with such inspiring people.

“You can’t stop the wave, but you can learn to surf” — Jon Kabat-Zinn