Overview

With

Finsa SPA

Year

2023

Sector

Healthcare

Location

Milan, Italy

Improving a cardiology program admissions & appointments system.

Goal

The Gemelli Hospital, a major private healthcare provider in Italy, partnered with Finsa to enhance its specialized cardiology program, “il percorso valvulopatia.” This project aimed to streamline the appointment system and improve the overall admission process for patients referred by regional physicians.

We aimed to map the end-to-end journey for patients and medical staff, improve communication, and ensure transparency and coordination throughout the application process.

Role & Contributions

Finsa, as the main consulting partner, approached this project from an end-to-end service design perspective—from strategy and research to UX/UI design and development.

My role evolved throughout the project, starting in the late research phase and continuing through design and development. I got involved during the interviews phase, support service definition, prototyping, and shaped the user interface and micro-interactions for the mobile and desktop applications. I took care of handoff, testing and refining design and usability.

Process & Key insights

Unraveling Pain Points with Service Blueprinting

Service blueprinting was a key tool to visualize how physicians, patients, and hospital staff interacted within the system. This helped identify the specific moments along process that needed to be addressed, for instance, the communication between patients and physicians and the application process. We deliver a solution covering multiple touchpoints along the patients’ journey.

What did we learned from these findings?

Application process – Neither doctors nor patients have a clear understanding of the status of any of the application processes.
Sensitive data handling – Hospitals's medical staff, doctors, and patients exchange sensitive documents through various channels such as email or WhatsApp, without a well-established protocol in place.
Admissions and priority – Patient admission to the program — based on the severity of the disease — is currently managed through a paper questionnaire, leading to inefficiencies and lack of traceability.

MVP Mobile App – Designed for regional physicians to manage patient referrals to the program.

Desktop Web App – Built principally for the cardiology team and hospital administrators to track and coordinate admissions.

Application process - Physicians must fill out an application for their patients following a series of questions. The applications procress follows a simple flow that allows hospital's medical staff to quickly screen the patients’ profile.

Patient page - The platform is design to keep patients profiles and display them in an easy-to-follow section containing their main information, communication with the hospital staff and important documents.

Quick links - Quickly switch between the communication page and the patients’ basic information.

Key Takeaways

The discovery phase was crucial to identify inefficiencies of the current application system and understand how to improve the process. A structured, step-by-step approach reduced complexity during admissions. Transparent communication tools enhanced the overall user experience for all stakeholders.