Design Thinking for Healthcare: App Development Project Report

This report details the development of a healthcare application using design thinking to address issues such as appointment booking difficulties and payment processes. The app includes features like doctor search, online appointment booking, and online payment options. The development stages involved coding, beta testing, and gathering customer feedback. A SWOT analysis highlights the app's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, including market competition and budget limitations. The initial prototype was refined through testing and customer feedback, leading to the final version. The report concludes with recommendations for future development based on customer requirements and regular debugging.

Development of Application for
Online Healthcare Response
(Medical Information System)
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:

Introduction
 This project is about application of design
thinking for development of an application
that will address a specific problem.
 The chosen topic for this project is
addressing healthcare response problem
faced by most of the patients.
 In this project, an application has been
developed where the patients can make
appointments with doctors or search for
hospitals online using a smartphone.

The Issues
 There are a number of issues that have
attempted to address by this application.
 The first issue is the difficulties faced by the
patients to make an appointment with a
doctor (Wang, Duong & Chen, 2016).
 The next issue is the rigorous admission
and payment process a patient has to
undergo even in cases of extreme
emergency like fatal injuries from accidents,
heart attacks and delivery time of women.

Possible Steps to Address
the Issues
 Using this app, the patients will be able to
book an appointment with a doctor or for a
bed in a hospital for treatment.
 The patients will be able to search for
doctors according to his requirements using
this app (Behm, Culvenor & Dixon, 2014).
 The app will enable the patient’s family to
verify identity and pay the admission
amount online, so that treatment of the
patient starts in no time.

Features Added to the
App
 The first feature includes a search
function using which, the patient
will be able to search for a doctor
near his location based on his
requirements (like orthopedic,
dental, hematologist, etc.).
 The second feature includes the
appointment function with which
the patient can check whether the
chosen doctor is available and
make an appointment online
(Liedtka, 2015).
 The final feature includes online
transfer of money for payment to
hospitals during urgent situations.

Development Stages of
the App
 The app was first be developed using coding and programming and the
proposed features were added to it one by one.
 The beta version was completed and released for download as limited time
demo version. The customers were able to test the app and provided necessary
feedbacks (McIlroy et al., 2016).
 Using the public forums like social media, some advertisements were done
regarding this new app for the purpose of global promotion.

SWOT Analysis
Strengths Weaknesses
i. This app will resolve healthcare response issues faced by patients all
over the world
ii. All smartphone users (with Android, iOS or Windows) will be able to
use the app
iii. This app will be of great commercial value and high revenues are
expected
i. Acceptability of this app among users is currently unknown
ii. Many people, especially living in rural areas will not be benefitted much
from this app
iii. This will not be a free to use app, there will be subscription fee structure
for the users
Opportunities Threats
i. This app will be able to reduce healthcare response time significantly
and will be convenient for the patients
ii. This app has commercial value and can be used for earning significant
amount of revenues
i. Market competition is growing rapidly as there are many alternative
apps in the app store already
ii. There are many scam apps that may negatively affect the reputation of
this app
iii. Limited budget is another significant threat to this project

Rapid Prototyping
 The initial prototype was first
developed.
 Some tests were done and the beta
version was finalized.
 The demo version was released in
public.
 Changes were done according to the
customer feedbacks.
 Subscription structure was prepared.
 Final version was released for

Current Market
Competition
 The market is highly competitive for medical and
healthcare sector.
 In medical and healthcare sectors, the market is
considered with multiple elements and attributes.
 The elements and attributes of healthcare market
are identified as service quality, patient
satisfaction, healthcare personnel performance,
service cost and convenience.
 In this section, the market and competition
elements are considered to provide a brief
overview of the healthcare market nature and
scenario.

Initial Response
 The initial response recorded for a
month has been fairly good.
 There have been reports of several
bugs and glitches that have been
resolved immediately.
 Further responses are expected in
the upcoming months.

Conclusion
 For handling and administrating a small support
team and an administration team should be
employed.
 The support team should be involved with handling
patient calls and proceed to appointment booking.
 The application will be able to automatically
schedule the appointment with particular doctor
with specified date and time.
 Furthermore, appointment will be completed once,
the patient attends the doctor in time and the
payment process will be conducted in the portal
again.

Recommendations for
Future
 New features can added based on
customer responses.
 The developments should be based
on customer requirements rather
than earning revenues only.
 Debugging should be executed on a
regular basis.