Overview

Dialogue is a healthcare startup that aims to improve the healthcare experience for Canadian patients by making it easier to access healthcare in a convenient, efficient way.

Healthcare in Canada

In a nutshell, it's free but not efficient.

Canadians have free healthcare provided by the government that covers essential medical services (family doctor, emergency care, surgery, scans and labs, consultations with certain specialists, certain medication, etc.).

But, getting a diagnosis can take a long time. A patient first has to see their family doctor, which can take a few weeks and requires them to take time away from work. If a patient doesn't have a family doctor (which is  common) they wait hours at a walk-in clinic. The doctor then decides if they need a referral to a specialist, where there's usually a several month wait list.

Health records are scattered between clinics, tools, paper, and are not accessible by the patient or shared amongst medical professionals. Patients are asked about their medical history at every visit and they're expected to remember everything.

The goal

To compliment and enhance the existing healthcare system by making the experience easier and more convenient for patients. Practically this meant:

• Better, easier, convenient access to healthcare professionals that substitutes in-person visits (eg. renewing a prescription, follow-ups, consultations with nutritionists, psychologists, etc.).
• Giving the patient control over their health by having access to their healthcare information.
• Compliance with regulations across Canada, which differ from province to province (each is responsible for the healthcare of its residents).

My role

I was the first full-time employee and the only designer during my time there. I designed the entire Patient experience (iOS and Android apps, and initial web app) from scratch and was responsible for everything from research, ideation, and problem solving, to the visual design, animations, and implementing UI changes. I was also heavily involved in our product planning (both long term and for individual sprints).

During my year at Dialogue, I also designed:

• The medical teams's experience (desktop and mobile) - I was also the Product Manager for this product
• A web dashboard for employers to provide access to their employees
• A visual library to streamline our design, which was implemented in collaboration with our development team and maintained by me (I generally did a lot of the pixel pushing in the codebase myself)
• Two versions of our main website (for our initial quiet launch, and after our loud launch)
• Most of marketing and sales collateral including materials for conferences and events (we had a design intern that helped for a few months), and illustrations across all platforms

The patient experience

There were quite a few moving pieces at Dialogue, not to mention having to interface with the larger Canadian healthcare system. The diagram below shows the process of a patient using Dialogue to get medical help for a concern they have. This process is not linear since each concern and patient is unique and may require several different methods diagnose the concern. There also isn't a clear "end" state since a patient can continue to ask questions or may have the issue come up again.