Transparency in care for better cooperation

ZorgDomein develops an eponymous platform that connects patients and care providers troughout The Netherlands. An independent online platform brings demand and supply of health care together. 91% of all general practicioners in The Netherlands uses ZorgDomein to refer patients to care providers. Health care professionals can safely exchange patient information. On the platform, the patient can find all the information needed for the consultation or treatment.

Our first assignment at ZorgDomein was to improve the digital requests for lab research, to make more general practicioners switch from paper to digital. Customer journey maps for the three user groups provided answers on questions like: What is the experience of a doctor demanding lab research? Of a patient who needs to visit a blood samping post? And of a lab employee?

Our UX-designer made designs for all three user groups, including a blood samping app for lab employees. Each of the three users can easily and efficiently receive and transfer information. The designs have been validated with the users, built and pilot-tested. Lots of general practicioners and other care providers switched to demanding research online; a number of labs implemented the blood sampling app. The result for the users:

• Applicants are being supported better making an application; for instance they can easily find research for a certain pathology.
• Patients can digitally use the application information and easily find a blood sampling post nearby.
• Lab employees can transfer information quick and easy.

Another assignment was to improve the creation and management of health care supply, allowing care facilities to easily do this by themselves. The platform's original goal was to give general practicioners insight into the health care supply by hospitals. This way they could make more precise referrals, complete with the actual patient information. More care providers and patients are being connected to the platform. Like paramedics, home care and mental care institutions, and suppliers of medical devices. All those institutions describe their offerings on ZorgDomein to showcase them to other care providers.

The growing number of health providers resulted in new types of health care products. Partly because of this, filling and managing the content of these products had become pretty complex. Managers need to make a number of difficult choices and missed an overview of their health care product. They also had difficulties when changing an existing product; it wasn't clear to them when these changes would be visible for other users.

Having a well-filled and up-to-date supply of health care products is essential in finding the right health care for a patient, and transferring the right information to another care provider. In the new design, the manager fills the product in a number of logical steps, each with a to-do explanation and information on the disclosure of the information. In the overview, and during a change, it is clarified if, and when, the product is visible for others. This provided the manager with oversight, structure and guidance. This design offers a new level of platform quality.