NHS Electronic Prescriptions
NHS App programme that allows patients to view electronic prescriptions and pharmacies to dispense medicine faster
Problem
People without nominated pharmacies need to collect their paper prescriptions from the GP, whether it’s repeat or one-offs. They then need to wait a longer time for the prescription to be dispersed at the pharmacy.
Solution
Electronic Prescription Service (EPS) is a service that allows patients to view their electronic prescription. This will eliminate the need for physical paper collection, and speed up the dispersing time at the pharmacy.
My Role
Full time Interaction Designer, designing low & high fidelity frames, user-engineering testing and user journey mapping.
Scope
I was part of the project for duration of 6 weeks
View Gallery
How might We (HMW)
During the early stages of the project development, I’ve employed the HMW framework to challenge design thinking and focus on key aspects:
Encouraging Problem Framing: Working within the NHS App came with a host of challenges and constraints, and conducting a workshop with partner teams allowed for a joint approach in overcoming these issues.
Generating Focused Solutions: This helped me narrow the broader problem into specific and manageable opportunities.
Promoting Team collaboration: The team composition included multi-disciplinary functions, and the framework was a great way to ensure that different roles were aligned on the final solution delivery.
Turning research into design opportunities: Vast research and discovery were conducted as part of the project. Regular communication with UR allowed me to extract salient points to apply to my design process.
Aligning the solution to the research
I have shared my initial solutions with the team at a design critique, and my peers and I have utilised research insights to make decisions on what stays and what goes. Initially, the solution that focused on check-out systems, did not benefit the user and was not supported by the NHS SPINE technology and ultimately needed to be revisited.
Key Research/Policy Insights
Storyboard
To help users understand how the ESP works in practice, I’ve drafted several storyboards, including some edge cases and how the product can help resolve and minimise the wait time, both at the pharmacy and by not having to go to the GP in person.
This was a pivotal tool in communicating strengths of findings and product viability when speaking with senior stakeholders who may have limited engagement with the project. It also facilitated better user research and earlier product discovery phase.
Product highlights
Barcode Display for access to prescription details for pharmacist
Having the barcode front and centre was one of the key findings in early user-engineering testing to ensure quickest route to product information for the pharmacies.
From a patient perspective, I’ve also designed a simple to read layout of critical information, such as the dispersing pharmacy and type of medication. This went through several iterations of information hierarchy, to ensure the optimal layout.
Prescription dosage instructions outlined in the medicine summary page
Having the barcode front and centre was one of the key findings in early user-engineering testing to ensure quickest route to product information for the pharmacies.
From a patient perspective, I’ve also designed a simple to read layout of critical information, such as the dispersing pharmacy and type of medication. This went through several iterations of information hierarchy, to ensure the optimal layout.
Order Summary and Status Checks
During early discovery, it became clear that many patients rely on a large number of prescriptions. Having a central order screen highlighting the prescription summary became necessary. With user research colleagues, I’ve gone through different iterations of what information was most important at a first glance. Providing dosage information and the net value proved the way to go.
Providing the status summary was tricky to implement on a technical level, due to KPI issues with the GP clinic systems. However, it was demonstrated to provide significant convenience to users. I’ve worked on implementing this in the front of the summary page to ensure quick legibility of orders.
