ResMed

Improving sleep therapy adherence

through peer coaching

Challenge

25 million Americans are afflicted by sleep apnea. The problem has only gotten worse over the past two decades.

Although sleep apnea therapy is proven to be effective, consistency can be challenging. Lapses in therapy adherence are recognized as the primary barrier to successfully improving the chronic disease.

Solution

A mobile service that increases therapy adherence by shifting the focus to peer coaching and establishing a forum to share community knowledge.

Our strategy aims to harness the power of positive peer support groups to transition from the current model of self-management to community support. Our service also streamlines access to the company's existing online resources through a conversational user interface.

My Role

Research

Wireframing

Visual Design

Duration

3 weeks

Type

Mobile App

Service Design

Team

Melodie Yashar

Xu Wang

CLIENT

ResMed is a manufacturer of medical equipment for managing sleep-disordered breathing, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and other chronic diseases.

Peer Coaching

Conversational

User Interface

User Forum

Sharing community

knowledge creates value for both patients and ResMed

Enhanced exposure to online resources increases awareness

Feature

Peer Coaching

Patients are connected with others based on their therapy adherence.

VALUE

Peer supported engagement leads to better health outcomes.

Patients are connected with peers who have both higher and lower scores so they can both receive support and provide encouragement.

Feature

User Forum

Patient support is now carried out in a public forum, increasing the sense of community and eliminating the need for ResMed to repeatedly answer common questions and concerns.

VALUE

Patients are connected with peers who have both higher and lower scores so they can both receive support and provide encouragement.

Feature

Conversational User Interface

Patients can easily find resources through the use of SleepBot.

VALUE

The conversational user interface feature augments exposure to ResMed's extensive online educational resources that are difficult to locate.

Product Roadmap

A strategic plan to identify user groups, enhance features, and collect data to inform future investment, design, and development decisions.

Process

Stakeholder Mapping

Research

Qualitative Interviews

Competitve Analysis

Ideation

How might we?

Reverse Assumptions

Scenarios

Design

Paper prototyping

Wireframes

Visual Design

Discovery

Stakeholder mapping enabled us to understand all parties involved within our client's ecosystem.

We created a visual representation of all stakeholders to identify and delineate relationships. By mapping out our understanding of the ecosystem, we exposed ourselves to the breadth of parties involved and began to discover the complexities within the process of sleep therapy and respiratory care.

RESEARCH

We discovered that device set-up, education on using the device, and therapy adherence were ways we could provide value to all stakeholders.

Interview Insights

1. Respiratory therapists associated with distributors do not interface as closely with patients as they claim.

How might we?

We reframed our insights into How Might We questions to reconstruct challenges into opportunities for design.

How might we respond to users of ResMed products more quickly and efficiently?

After interviewing patients, respiratory therapists, clinicians, and doctors, we created a patient flow.

Doctor requests patient to take a CPAP titration test.

Patient is administered CPAP test in the lab.

If diagnosed, the doctor initiates the process of sleep therapy.

Patient contacts the insurance company to order the device.

Insurance company orders the device

from ResMed.

ResMed sends the device to a nearby Durable Medical Equipment company.

A respiratory therapist, sets up the device and educates patient on usage.

Doctor monitors patient data through a cloud-based system.

During interviews, users of all ages mentioned the difficulty in using the hardware. Two users mentioned the inconvenience in referencing the user guide each time a problem occurs.

How might we lessen the burden on doctors and therapists for ensuring adherence?

After conducting interviews with customers of ResMed products, we found that customers are dissatisfied with the infrequent communication and lack of intimacy with their doctors or respiratory therapists. Oftentimes, customers wait anywhere from one day to one week to hear from their healthcare professional.

2. Users have trouble with device hardware and find the experience of using a CPAP device in the long term bothersome and irritating.

How might we empower customers to feel more connected and improve their sleep on a daily basis?

Ideation

We began ideation by reversing our assumptions to create service ideas. We wanted to destabilize our conventional thinking pattern.

Conceptualization

Peer coaching is a big design opportunity. Social influence has the potential to instill behavior change within a group of individuals.

What if we used predictive analytics to connect individuals with similar score patterns? Creating a small meaningful relationship between two people who are trying to improve their sleep score would close the loop on patients feeling disconnected from the lack of follow-up from doctors and respiratory therapists.