psy Health is a leading digital health platform for the management of epilepsy that empowers patients, caregivers and healthcare professionals. By combining innovative technologies, user-centric designs, and state-of-the-art data analytics, Epsy provides patients and physicians with actionable insights that can help to accelerate the pathway towards better outcomes. The multi-award-winning venture was developed from idea to launch in under 8.5 months, and became the No. 1 Epilepsy app by helping 120k users live a better life with epilepsy in its 1st year post-launch.
Industry: Healthcare | Digital Therapeutics
My Role: Market Research, Product Strategy & CX Lead
Context:
Epilepsy is a chronic neurological disorder in which brain activity becomes abnormal, causing seizures or periods of unusual behavior, sensations, and sometimes loss of awareness. In the US 1.2% of the US population have active epilepsy. This is about 3.4 million people with epilepsy nationwide: 3 million adults and 470,000 children.
Problem Space:
Out of these 3.4 million people, 30% have Drug Resistant Epilepsy (DRE) where more than 3 medications fail to control seizures. Whilst alternative treatments exist, it can take patients seven to twenty years to get the right treatment.
The initial investigation aimed to identify opportunities to help patients, their caretakers, and their healthcare professionals identify their epilepsy type faster, learn about their disease pattern, and stick to their treatment plan to improve patient's quality of life with the disease substantially.
“How might we help Epilepsy patients improve their quality of life and speed up their journey towards treatment options that works for them."
What I did:
I developed the strategic imperative, product strategy, business design backbone, and go-to-market approach for this multi-award-winning epilepsy management start-up from the initial idea to launch across the US and UK.
Outcomes:
It took 8.5 months to take the venture from idea to launch, and 'Epsy' has since received several leading industry awards. One year later, the venture became the No. 1 Epilepsy App in the App Store and Google Play, with over 120.000 patients, caregivers, and health care professionals actively using the app.
Epsy was a strategic corporate innovation project with teams set up between London headquarters and the initial target market in the US. Over 8.5 months, our core team of 8 expanded to ~20 strategists, designers, engineers, growth marketers, content strategists, product managers, legal counsel, and medical insights experts.
Throughout the process, I wore many hats, from leading the initial opportunity discovery and market evaluation to defining the product strategy and working with design and engineering to make the vision come to life. Along the way, I was constantly iterating and co-creating with users and stakeholders to ensure the product strategy evolved along with emerging needs and bug fixes were appropriately addressed by design and development teams and our business model aligned with customer and stakeholder expectations. I also created the content and behavior design strategies that drove the pre- and post-launch user activation and engagement.
The innovation process was broken down into 4 phases + post-launch activities:
*Illustrations have been adapted to maintain client confidentiality
Objectives of this phase:
Two rounds of market and ethnographic research were conducted to identify, test, and validate current gaps, opportunity spaces, and concept ideas. The process culminated in a broadening of the Total Addressable Market (TAM) due to the broad applicability of the intrinsic user needs, lack of patient-friendly solutions in the market, and a set of concepts and features preferred by the target audience of patients, caregivers, and Healthcare professionals.
Quantitative surveys in different formats were a cornerstone of the iterative research and development process throughout the venture. In the early stages the surveys helped narrow down our user segments for qualitative investigations and confirm target market hypotheses. In later stages, qualitative research added data insights to fill gaps in business case assumptions, and was used for confirmatory and A/B testing of business model experiments.
An initial round of ethnographic research helped solidify the target market user groups and core needs from our quantitative study and added additional richness around use cases, typical patient journey, needs and frictions, opportunity spaces.
Three key inputs were used to formulate personas:
The above inputs evolved into specific persona archetypes in line with differentiated patient lifecycle stages.
The patient journey illustrates the typical flow of experiences that (potential) epilepsy patients, their caregivers, and healthcare professionals (HCPs) go through from first seizure to advanced treatment. The journey contains several components, including:
This phase focused on testing the desirability and viability of the selected concepts and included:
The three co-design sessions culminated in 43+ one-on-one user testing sessions, 6 focus groups, and 20+ concept ideas. Together with a broad-reaching survey these were narrowed down to 3 product concepts to explore in detail.
For each remaining concept detailed analysis into market and business model viability was conducted, hypotheses were formed, and qualitative and quantitative research was conducted to validated desirability and viability of the proposed concepts. Due to an expanded target market and broad applicability, the three concepts were eventually merged into one product with different features for each target group, starting with the patient group.
Unfortunately, the analysis concluded that many of the most 'desirable' features from a patient and doctor perspective had a high implementation risk based on their technical and legal requirements in combination with the short development timeframe.
However, additional research showed that Epsy could 'win' on usability alone, given the vital need for a patient-friendly solution that no competitor in the market had addressed. Hence, five core features were chosen, while the technical exploration of two more complex machine learning features continued via spikes in the background.
“The ease of use is a clear differentiator. Difficulties onboarding and the time required to log data is the major problem with products on the market today” - Lead for Digital Health Epilepsy Tools at a Level 4 Epilepsy Center
With the initial hypotheses confirmed during MVP testing, the Alpha phase focused on:
Multiple Test & Learn cycles throughout the MVP phase ensured continuous refinement of the initial feature set, critical bug fixes, and a launch-ready product roadmap. With MVP features solidified, remote testing methodologies and tools offered quick feedback mechanisms to gain insights on:
In the lead-up to the complete functional build, Epsy's brand had to be defined in line with end-user and partner preferences while differentiating from competitors and comparators. The process included:
"I like the concept with the colors and friendly graphics. If you’re gonna make something like this make it fun!" – Test Patient
The most critical features for patients included tracking seizures, medication intake, side effects, and identifying trends over time to have better conversations with their physicians. Physicians, on the other hand, needed outputs in an easy-to-digest yet detailed format to draw valuable treatment conclusions. The report was co-created in consultation with 30+ HCPs and configured to be HIPAA and Electronic Health Records (EHR) system compatible.
“ The report is far beyond the status quo. It will give more time in the appointment to talk with the patient and personalize care. ” – Epileptologist at a Level 4 Epilepsy Center
The MVP was the first significant opportunity to test Epsy's impact on changing patient behavior via reminders, insights, and educational content. The analytical dashboard ensured that the experiments were underpinned by quantitative insights that measured their effect on in-app activation, engagement, and retention.
Notably, the data collection had to comply with HIPPA, GDPR, and local requirements to protect our test users' identity and medical information.
In line with streamlining the UX process, the Customer Success function became a critical component of the end-user experience. User requests were strategically analyzed by type, frequency, and urgency to establish a more efficient process to resolve each issue. In addition, a CRM system was set up to host an evolving library of FAQs, templates, and guidelines that optimized the customer contact center while achieving a consistent brand voice.
Content:
The ideas for in-app content formats and nudges from the co-design sessions were grouped into themes and integrated into a comprehensive Beta content and tagging architecture. Based on this, 'content journeys' for different patient lifecycle stages were created to help users navigate the disease pathways more comprehensively.
Behavior Design:
A collection of behavior nudges was developed in line with the content strategy to help users through their first months with Epsy. The Behavior Design effort involved the creation of small 'informational' and 'call-to-action' notifications to 'nudge' users towards achieving better health outcomes. These included reminders to take their medication, log seizures, investigate life events, or learn strategies to manage the disease better. As a result, a 75%-300% uplift in activation and engagement was observed post-implementation.
After a successful Alpha phase, the Beta phase focused on:
The testimonials below show that Epsy already impacted people's lives during the pre-launch phases (first and second row) and now receives top ratings across the App and Google play store (third row).
"Pam was incredible to work with on Epsy - her commitment to (and advocacy for) building a product that would be loved by the patients was unwavering. She consistently worked across cohorts, going beyond her role to drive the design and iteration of key product features (HCP report, medication reminders, etc) and leading customer success (being the "go-to" person for our MVP users) throughout incubation - including working closely with engineering to ensure product outcomes. Her work output is always of the highest quality, and she is exceptional at trading off completeness with attention to detail. The insights she gathers have been a critical input into the broader product development process."
~ Matt B. CTO for the Epsy Venture/Lead Engineer at BCG Digital Ventures
"During the project I saw Pam grow into a confident leader within the team. She communicated her findings clearly and integrated solution-based thinking into all of her team presentations. She absorbed data from the field, and drew logical and well-founded conclusions. She was open to the views of other and sought out advice when needed. I think in her next project she is ready to take on additional leadership responsibilities. As a testament to her work, the current design for our medical digital app is receiving fantastic reviews from the user base.
~ Grace D., Partner & Director at BCG Digital Ventures
Pam was a great project organizer on the team. She produced high-quality materials, scheduled reviews and activities, and drove particular strategic planning initiatives on the growth/marketing side of the project. I was very impressed with her ability to adapt to various challenges, her desire to pick up tasks above and beyond her role, and the way she cultivated positive relationships among her teammates. She is a great asset to DV."
~ Precy Q., Venture GM at BCG Digital Ventures
"Pam was the voice of the patients from the beginning - always helping shape feature development and design while being in another timezone - no easy task! Her documentation skills are some of the best I’ve seen with great deck design and strategic thinking that she presented to the wider team. Pam wrote an Incredible wrap up deck for research and product that was so thorough and detailed that the incoming team have had a seamless transition. She also spent the time to really understand and scrutinise the product and provide invaluable feedback to the development team."
~ Kartik P., Sr. UX Designer at BCG Digital Ventures
*Original artifacts in this case study have been redacted or recreated to protect client confidentiality
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Read MoreI am a multi-disciplinary Strategy, Product, and Transformation leader, who thrives on coaching teams through complex business challenges to help organizations drive towards a more sustainable, equitable, and diverse future without loosing sight of tangible bottom-line impact.
