Pathio

A few years ago I was approached to take an idea a physician and an IT director embedded in the nation's top ACO had with the goal of helping care teams work better together.

At the time, post-it notes were (and continue to be) the tool of choice that many caregivers and health professionals used to coordinate care between different teams within the same organizaion.

We started by researching what caregivers were currently doing and the "why" behind their decisions. After shadowing them for a few days, we went back to develop a clickable prototype and had some roundtables where we presented the concept. We started by integrating the newer way of doing things within their current workflow.

In behavioral design, this is known as 'nudging'. So, we did just that. We started nudging selectively until we noticed an alteration in the workflow that allowed us to optimize it and introduce new features that were carefully crafted with the goal of making the user much more efficient.

The most effective way in changing behavior is to introduce small, subtle but effective changes in a persons workflow.

Once that step was complete, we were able to learn what worked, what didn't, and designed accordingly. The platform is based on Google's Material Design library, but we did all we could to make it difficult to tell that was the library of choice in efforts to make the project stand out from the rest of sites built on Material.

This project required multiple iterations and reliability on various data points throughout the implementation phase. While I was responsible for the entire design from start to finish, what truly gave this platform life was seeing caregivers using the Pathio to catch patients that typically fall in care gaps and give the treatment they need.

Pathio has been deployed across multiple clinics and ACO's in the Midwest.