Joined Mindsumo’s Challenge for an anonymous company last December - January 2018 and ranked 4th. So sharing my answer here.

Background

When new patients just found out that they had cancer, the first thing that they’d want to do is to find someone to talk about it to, because sometimes they want to keep the bad news from their loved ones (Daily Mail, 2014). It would be hard for them to keep it by themselves, when they want to know more about what should they do next, what treatments are available, how it would affect their life, how to accept it, or how to tell their loved ones about it. It would be harsh to give them the access to these resources in text only, not allowing them to interact with the author of the resources in a closer and more personal way. This is where this application that I am going to propose comes in and enable new patients to interact with another patient, to interact with an expert.

Technology

The applications that I am proposing comes in the form of Progressive Web Applications (PWA). The reason behind this is to enable patients to browse the site from mobile, tablet, and desktop; without the barrier of installing applications or having to access the site from a certain device. From technological perspective, PWA would deliver a seamless app-like experience, while providing flexibility to access it from any devices, and with an easier effort to develop it. Plus, with the rich information on resources and its forum, the SEO of this application should be good to be in Google’s search first page.

Machine learning is also going to be used to help personalize the resources that user might access. If user hasn’t logged in, then we are going to show top-rated resources.

Application Design

The Application that I am proposing would consist of several features:

• Community
  • Forum Discussions: The forum would be formatted like a Q&A, where anyone can ask and anyone can answer the questions. New patients can see previously questions asked.
  • Chat Room: The chat room would be available for those who wants to chat and get responses in real time.
• Resources: This section would be filled with resources that might help the patients. Resources are curated by the company; some are written by the company, cited from another sources, and some are generated by our user. There would be comment section in which users can comment on it, and all comments about this particular resources would be migrated to a forum discussion as well. So there would be 2 ways for one to access resource (and its comment), via Resources page and via Forum.
• Ask Expert: This feature would come in the form of a Forum discussions (like Reddit’s AMA), where patients can ask the experts on a particular topic.
• Paperwork Reminder: remind patients of the paperwork that he or she needs to submit. Patients can enable / disable reminder. In this application, the patients are NOT required to sign in. However the feature ask expert and chat room can only be accessed if user signed in.

Patient Experience (User Journey)

1. The new patient would see the link and open it in their device (be it computer, mobile phone, or tablet) or browse the internet for cancer-related questions and open this applications from the Google search results. The reason why I picked link is because the discreetness it provides, compared to the other alternatives (such as QR Code or NFC, where you have to be close to it and scan it)
2. In the homepage, new patient would see what the site has to offer. So we have to emphasize on the community, the resources, and the anonimity. Patients can sign up, or remain as guest and browse the site anonymously.
3. The site would then scan the cookie, to determine whether the patient ever accessed the site previously. If he or she had not, then show the onboarding/ Introduction page.

Goal: Introduce new patients to a community of fellow patients as soon as possible

In the homepage, we would emphasize on the community. In the introduction, we would introduce community first. Why? Because we believe that enduring a hard thing together would be better than enduring it alone. In every page, we are going to show the currently active Chat Room and the currently active AMA). Even in resources page, there are going to be comment section, in which patients can give their opinion about a particular resources. That’s how important communities are in this application.

Other than introducing community, we are also going to display the top most looked resources in the introduction page. So that users can go straight ahead to the resources that might interest them. This would be where machine learning comes in. The model could learn from user behavior (logged in) and personalize the resources that are related to the one they just accessed.

Goal: Ensure our efforts to connect patient to resources and community don’t get overlooked

This application would be our patient’s one stop solution. If they want to look for information, they could find it in resource or forum. If they want to verify the truth of a myth, or verify an article that he or she read, they can ask the experts about it. If they want to stay up to date with the information, the machine learning algorithm would provide relevant resources for them. If they are looking for ‘What paperworks should I do’ they could find it in this application. If they want to look for someone to hear their sorrow, their story, and get a quick response they could find it in the chat room. On top of everything, our application offered anonymity, so users and guests would feel at peace for accessing and using our applications.

Homepage + Onboarding

Reference: Daily Mail. 2014. Would you tell your family you had cancer? 25% of patients say they considered keeping the bad news from loved ones.