Understand what influences digital patient experiences

This section will direct your design process and frame your design goal and concepts.

Problems

Consider the factors that affect digital patient experience

Design

Consider design constructs and conduct methods.

Design

Consider design constructs and conduct methods.

Design

Consider design constructs and conduct methods.

Strategies

Apply design guidelines.

*The information of this page is based on:

  1. Wang, T., Giunti, G., Melles, M., & Goossens, R. (2022). Design-Relevant Factors Affecting the Patient Experience in Digital Health: Preliminary Results of an Umbrella Systematic Review. Studies in health technology and informatics, 290, 862–866. https://doi.org/10.3233/SHTI220202

  1. Wang, T., Giunti, G., Melles, M., & Goossens, R. (2022). Digital patient experience: umbrella systematic review. Journal of medical Internet research, 24(8), e37952.

Identify problems

Influencing factors that facilitate or impede the digital patient experience

All
Behavioural Determinants
Technical Determinants
Organizational Determinants
Behavioural

Patient Capability

Technical

Functionality

Organizational

Society

Behavioural

Patient Motivation

Technical

Interaction Design

Behavioural

Patient Opportunity

Organizational

Organization

Technical

Technology

Organizational

physicality

Design Strategies

Design Guidelines for improving the digital patient experience

Patient capability

  • Identify patients’ knowledge and skill levels by understanding their technology, language, and health literacy;

  • Consider their previous experience and current confidence level in using digital health;

  • Improve their actual literacy and correct their perceived inability;

  • Tailor design to their ability.

Patient opportunity

  • Profile patients’ identity (eg, age, gender, economic status, and daily routines) and health status (eg, illness complexity, severity, and stability);

  • Consider patients’ accessibility and affordance to digital health;

  • Tailor design to their individual opportunity

Patient motivation

  • Recognize patients’ mindset and perceived advantages and disadvantages;

  • Inform them of the potential benefits of using digital health;

  • Address their concerns and worries; understand their expectations and needs;

  • Tailor design to their preferences to trigger their motivation.

Intervention technology

  • Improve technical usability; 

  • Promote ease of use, ready-to-use, and timely feedback on digital health;

  • Fit technical features, delivery media, and devices to patients’ preferences and needs.

Intervention functionality

  • Strengthen theory-based interventions (eg, behavior change techniques and evidence-based interventions); 

  • Improve intervention quality, considering privacy, security, and accuracy issues; 

  • Provide regular and continuous social support combining both remote communication and real human contact; 

  • Tailor health promotion and intervention structure to patients’ needs and preferences.

Intervention interaction design

  • Provide personalized and consistent information, clear tutorials or technical support, and visualize data; 

  • Allow patients to choose personalized interactive elements; 

  • Follow human or user-centered design, co-design, and inclusive design methods; 

  • Involve multi-stakeholders and multi-disciplines in the design process.

Organizational environment

  • Reduce equipment or service cost and time; 

  • improve health care providers’ professional ability, communication skills, and service attitudes across the use of digital health; 

  • increase workflow transparency and clarify accountability; 

  • improve system integration and compatibility.

Physical environment

  • Provide a familiar, warm, and comfortable environment rather than cold and unfamiliar settings; 

  • reduce environmental distractions (eg, background noise or lighting).

Social environment

  • Provide adequate support policies and legislation; 

  • Develop plausible business cases.