Kaiser Permanente
The Before Picture
Kaiser Permanente is one of the largest nonprofit healthcare plans in the United States, serving over 12 million members. It operates 39 hospitals and more than 700 medical offices, with over 300,000 personnel, including more than 80,000 physicians and nurses according to Wikipedia.
In early 2020, Kaiser chose YML to revamp their digital offerings, starting with their native mobile solutions. This is how their Android app looked like at the time:
Start of a journey
Hired as Lead Android Engineer at YML for the project, with a fair amount of Android lead experience, I wasn't necessarily intimidated. It wasn't until I finally gained IT access did that change. The project consisted of tens of thousands of lines of code. Ten plus teams were assigned to work on both Android & iOS.
Interestingly enough, it was my first time ever serving a client as a consultant. Our clients were not only Kaiser product owners, but developers as well. It was critical for me to hone in on relationship building skills to allow for smoother collaboration thus faster development cycles.
Another challenge was the necessity of ensuring application accessibility. ADA, Americans with Disabilities Act, made it necessary for companies to not discriminate people with disabilities. Development therefore brought about never experienced before challenges to allow blind people navigate and operate the application within reason.
CV Hit
Early on the project, corona virus hit the globe at large. Various patients were unable to visit hospitals anymore. This lead to a ton of pressure to deliver better patient e-visit experiences quickly.
The After Picture
After a fantastic effort by team, we managed a rollout to various states, and eventually nation wide. I couldn't have been prouder working amongst such brilliant project managers, product owners, designers, engineers, and QA. It was truly a group herioc effort.
On Premise Care
Post national rollout, we worked hard to deliver capability for patients to have immersive on hospital site experiences. The application, upon sensing patients on Kaiser premises, would show action items needing uptake during their visit. Such action items included needing to fill up on prescriptions, collection examination results, etc.
Reception
While the application looked great, the numbers looked better:
- App Store ratings jumped from 3.1 to 4.2 stars.
- Mobile application satisfaction jumped to more than 91%.
- J.D Power later that year ranked Kaiser as best overall health provider, where product/design offering metrics were taken into account.
- The mobile app won a Webby 2022 Award for Best Health & Fitness app.
- Won Fast Company's Design Company of the Year (2022).