Diagramming innovation that transforms the Japanese healthcare industry
Next Tomorrow
About the project
First, let’s dive into some context. One of the most significant challenges of Japanese healthcare is the problem of an aging society and the enormous number of patients per 1 doctor. To face this challenge, Japan divided the land into thousands of regions and assigned one or two supporting centers to every one of them. Experts working in those entities aim to diagnose and group older patients before handing them to private clinics. Thus doctors in private clinics have more time and can be focused on curing ill people rather than handling routine check-ups.
Next Tomorrow took up an innovative idea to provide software solutions that would help the supporting centers increase the effectiveness of their services. The project we had the pleasure to work on together aimed at creating a health app that:
allowed users to gather information about the patients through customized questionnaires and organize it,
supported coordinators in making decisions about which healthcare provider they should recommend to a certain patient, unified the diagnosis process management among various supporting centers.
Our tasks
Devising a scenario builder with question lists
The first phase of the project aimed at creating a scenario builder that allowed users to see a preview of what the lists of questions & answers would look like.
Creating a configurable questionnaire
The second phase’s goal was to deliver customizable questionnaires with lists of questions that administrators could define in systems. Lists differed according to the supporting center and the patients’ complaints.
We’re impressed with their ability to deliver their requirements with agility. Everything has been accomplished faster than expected, which I believe is the highlight of our collaboration.
Byung Park, CSO at Next Tomorrow
Source: Clutch.co
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Challenges
1. Harsh time & money pressure
2. Designing a simple, functional, and transparent interface
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Solutions
1. Designing a user-friendly interface based on diagrams
First, it was essential to gather information from the stakeholders about the app’s end users – who they were and what they did. Then, keeping in mind what kind of tasks the users would complete in the app, we collected insights about the data structures they had to operate on. With the data in place, we were able to create an information architecture. Finally the designers chose the navigation form, the layout, and tables that matched the whole architecture.
Moreover, questionnaires in the app were enriched with visually engaging graphs and diagrams – and that was possible thanks to using JointJS+.
2. Combining skills for fast development of a management system
Time pressure didn’t mean that we had to be in a hurry! Building the right team was the first step of the most effective product development.
In the project, we had a scrum master who watched over the process, a PO Proxy who took care of the project’s backlog, QAs who ensured the quality of the software and the designers who did their best in terms of UX. Combining these skills made it possible to deliver the product on time and enhanced the product’s quality.
Technology we used
Rappid
React
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Project Results
Delivering prototypes for further use during pitches with investors
Series of workshops during which we validated the main app’s concepts resulted in the delivery of a prototype ready to be presented to investors. In case of another fundraising round, the app is supposed to be further developed and enhanced with AI. Fingers crossed!
Opening the door for the Japanese healthcare industry’s improvement
Using diagramming solutions to improve the workflow management system was only one of the first steps on the much broader journey. Japanese healthcare has been battling with the old and dusty IT systems for many years and now, the freshness of innovation paves the way for further refinements.
