Lesson 2: Redesign the process before adding technology
The next step was to look into the process. At first, I thought it would be enough to digitize existing workflows. But what we found was that many of the processes were inefficient or inconsistent in themselves.
For example, recordkeeping differs from nurse to nurse. Some were notebooks, some pieces of paper, some were nothing at all. If you were simply building a digital tool to replicate this, you could digitize the chaos.
Instead, we worked with nurses to create a simple, standardized process for patient intake and follow-up. I created a complete process map with a nurse about what happens when I visit a medical facility. We co-created a complete patient journey with a physical setup. Only after this process was agreed was it possible to map the journey to designing the user screen to provide the same experience. Not only this, but when we wanted to deploy a system in the field, we once again reminded all nurses of the entire manual process and showed them step by step on the digital platform.
