HealthNet Ontario

HealthNet Ontario

In Ontario's healthcare system, patients and healthcare professionals face substantial challenges that impede the efficiency and effectiveness of healthcare services. To bridge the gap between patients and healthcare professionals, we decided to create a cutting-edge, patient-oriented medical consultation application with an integrated chatbot feature.

Quick Summary 

A mobile application that can allow patients and healthcare professionals to have consultations virtually, and allowing healthcare professionals to use integrated chatbot features to get important information in an effective way to speed up some process.

Problem Statement

In Ontario's healthcare system, patients and healthcare professionals are confronted with significant challenges that hinder the efficiency and effectiveness of healthcare services.

For Patients: Patients struggle with long wait times and confusing healthcare processes, despite the system's focus on well-being. Simplifying access and providing real-time support through a chatbot in a medical app can improve the patient experience and reduce delays.

For Healthcare Professionals: Ontario healthcare providers struggle with complex billing under the 'Schedule of Benefits,' needing a user-friendly tool with real-time assistance to ensure compliance and improve patient care. Our solution is a patient-focused app with an integrated chatbot to simplify these processes.

Team Front-end

Literature Review

a. Our in-depth research into Ontario's healthcare system has revealed another challenge faced by healthcare providers, particularly in managing patient consultations and understanding the reimbursement processes of the Ontario Health Insurance Plan (OHIP). According to a critical article on LinkedIn, the OHIP system faces systemic challenges that pose formidable barriers to delivering efficient and accessible healthcare services to Canadians. Moreover, data from the Ontario Health Coalition shows that clinics have wrongfully charged patients more than $42,000 for services that should have been covered by OHIP since 2018. These findings highlight the existing issues within the system, underscoring the necessity of developing an application that aids medical providers in more effectively managing patient consultations and understanding OHIP reimbursement processes.

b. In terms of app design, we referred to articles from Uptech and UXPin, which discuss key principles and challenges in designing healthcare apps for both user groups. They emphasize the importance of user-centred design, clear and intuitive interfaces, and the design of necessary and recommended features for healthcare apps. These design principles are fundamental to ensuring our application meets the needs of healthcare providers while providing a positive user experience.

Market Needs:

• • Patients to connect with doctors virtually

  • Doctors can access information easily in an accessible and user-friendly format

  • Book appointments virtually

  • Doctors to access accurate and reliable information that is up to date within a few seconds

  • Patients have access to services at home without paying extra

Competitor Analysis: 

• • Dialogue

    • Purpose: It is a medical app, where users can connect with doctors virtually

    • Pros:

      • Order prescription drugs virtually from doctors

      • Doctors can easily identify health symptoms based on how the user interacts with the virtual interface of moving their face at certain angles

      • Book appointments on the app

    • Cons:

      • Doctors do not have a resource guide that outputs information easily

      • Doctors or patients do not see important news/announcements within the healthcare industry

      • Lack of appointment timings: Most of the time they are fully booked as this app only have doctors who work for this organization

      • Limited to this organization

      • Not centrally-design

  • DynaMed Plus

    • Purpose: Healthcare professionals uses it to inform clinical care. 

    • Pros:

      • Easy to use

      • Thousands of photos/graphics

      • Micromedex drug content integration

    • Cons:

      • Less comprehensive

      • Not updated that much

      • Paid subscription for accessibility needs

  • Joule: CMA App

    • Purpose: Provides medical tips and tools to healthcare professionals

    • Pros:

      • Searchable database Infopoems and InfoPratique, where there is

      • Access to Clinical Key, videos and journals.

      • Easy to use

    • Cons:

      • Need to remember login (There is no option to save username and password)

Identified Gaps

Although there are several healthcare platforms and tools on the market aimed at enhancing the efficiency and accessibility of medical services, most focus primarily on patient needs rather than addressing the specific challenges faced by healthcare providers. The current system still faces the following gaps:

a. The opacity and issues with incorrect billing of medical fees lead to financial stress and decreased trust among patients. Moreover, there is a lack of a unified platform by the provincial government that could simplify the complexities of medical insurance plans (such as OHIP), allowing healthcare providers and patients to easily access and understand relevant information.

b. While virtual medical services offer convenience, there are clear gaps in guidance regarding the verification process and standardization.

c. There is a lack of research and practice in medical application design focusing on the needs of healthcare providers and accessibility. I seldom see the implementation of accessibility design in any existing tools.

Key Findings

a. The access and billing system for healthcare services requires greater transparency and simplification to reduce wrongful charges and enhance patient trust.

b. There is an opportunity to develop a medical application integrating UI/UX design principles, focusing on improving the workflow for healthcare providers and the experience for patients. Additionally, given the sensitivity and complexity of the medical field, ensuring user data security and compliance with relevant regulations is also necessary.

c. Accessible design is crucial to ensuring that all users, especially those with special needs, can effectively use the medical application.

Developments

In light of these challenges and gaps, our project aims to develop a medical consultation app for patients and another version for healthcare providers, by integrating efficient OHIP management tools and optimizing the user interface according to healthcare service app design principles. This approach is intended to improve the efficiency and quality of healthcare provision. Our application will leverage the latest technological innovations to help healthcare providers quickly answer questions about OHIP, while simplifying the patient management process through an intuitive and user-friendly interface.

Team Back-end

• The back-end team embarked on a comprehensive literature review to delve into various themes pertinent to back-end development. This included exploring topics such as tokenization, word embedding, and illustrated transformers. Through academic papers, technical documentation, and tutorial videos, the team gained insights into the latest trends and technologies building up necessary technical knowledge for back-end development.

• Identified Gap

Through the literature review, the back-end team identified potential challenges in existing back-end development practices. The major challenge was the integration of external API (Open AI API) with high accuracy. Due to the inherent limitations of generative AI, OpenAI has excelled in natural language generation, but it has shown weaknesses in accuracy, which are particularly important for sensitive topics such as health concerns.

• Key Findings & Development 

• Synthesizing the research findings, the back-end team highlighted key insights and trends relevant to back-end development in the project context. Based on the findings, the backend team proposed various solutions to respond to the identified gaps and build the infrastructure for backend development.

• a. Limiting Data for Answer Generation: One key finding is the importance of ensuring the reliability and accuracy of data used to train the AI model. Given the limited data available, it's crucial to focus on utilizing trustworthy sources and implementing algorithms that can effectively filter and refine the data used for answer generation.

• b. Tailoring Model Parameters for Accuracy: Another key finding is the recognition that traditional Generative AI models may not be optimized for accuracy with limited data. Generally, generative AI models need to be trained on huge data and the more natural language they learn, the more accurate embedding values are derived. By customizing parameters such as token size, temperature, and sensitivity, the project aims to improve the quality of AI-generated responses tailored to the specific dataset available.

c. Construction of Vector Database for Monitoring: The last key finding involves the need for a robust monitoring system to track the fine-tuning values and intermediate processes involved in training the AI model. Building a vector database allows for efficient tracking and analysis of these parameters, facilitating optimization and refinement of the AI model over time.

Lessoned Learned

• This is a project that I was very interested to work with as its related to healthcare, which is something that is important right now in the province of Ontario. After researching about patient wait times at healthcare professional offices, I realized that many patients like me have a feeling of waiting too long for a health concern or other medical related actions. 

• I have gained a more experience in User Research by ensuring research is aligned with the current market and ensuring the team's progress on the technical side is aligned with the research that I have been working on. 

Reflection

Overall, this project have made me to learn so many greatful things while researching and collaborating with my team members. I had the opportunity work on a 4 months project that felt similar to a real project that you will do in the professional work industry. I had a fun time attending lots of weekly stand-up weekly meetings on MS Teams with my team members, and supervisor that is involved in this short-term project. This experience have made me to expand my interest of pursuing a career within UX Research and Product Manager.

Reference

Chandrasena, C. (2018). Medical Apps for Physicians and Patients. Presented at the OntarioMD EMR Every Step Conference, Toronto. Retrieved from https://www.ontariomd.ca/documents/events%20info/esc%20-%20toronto%20-%202018%20-%20presentations/medical%20apps%20for%20physicians%20and%20patients%20cchandrasena%20ontariomd%20emr%20every%20step%20toronto%202018.pdf

Government of Ontario. (n.d.). Ontario Launches New Tool to Connect People to Nurses and Other Health Services from Anywhere, at Any Time. Retrieved from https://news.ontario.ca/en/release/1002095/ontario-launches-new-tool-to-connect-people-to-nurses-and-other-health-services-from-anywhere-at-any-time

Najafi Mehri, S. (n.d.). A Critique of OHIP Canada: Systematic Challenges. Retrieved from https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/critique-ohip-canada-systematic-challenges-soheil-najafi-mehri/

Ontario Health. (n.d.). Digital and Virtual Services. Retrieved from https://www.ontariohealth.ca/getting-health-care/digital-virtual-services

Ontario Health. (n.d.). Virtual Visits Verification. Retrieved from https://www.ontariohealth.ca/system-planning/digital-standards/virtual-visits-verification

Ontario Health Coalition. (n.d.). Over $42K in Wrongful Fees Charged to Ontario Patients by Clinics Since 2018. Retrieved from https://www.ontariohealthcoalition.ca/index.php/over-42k-in-wrongful-fees-charged-to-ontario-patients-by-clinics-since-2018/

UXPin. (n.d.). 7 Best Practices for Designing a Healthcare App. Retrieved fromhttps://www.uxpin.com/studio/blog/healthcare-app-design/

Uptech. (n.d.). UX Design in Healthcare: A Comprehensive Guide. Retrieved from https://www.uptech.team/blog/ux-healthcare

Virtual Health Clinic. (n.d.). Common Visits in Ontario. Retrieved from https://www.virtualhealthclinic.com/common-visits-ontario