Rebuilding Health Journey, an Infant and School Health Checkup App Municipalities Offer Residents, Starting from Usability

Overview

Real World Data Co., Ltd. is a company that has long worked on digitizing hospital medical records and health checkup information. It was already operating infant health checkup and school health checkup apps with municipalities, but usability issues, such as cumbersome login and checkup results that were hard to read as rows of numbers, showed up in the app store ratings, and there were times when its proposals to municipalities lacked persuasive power.

Centering on the experience of viewing and sharing checkup results, we rebuilt the resident app, the admin panel for municipalities, and the admin panel for the operator as a single whole. Because the apps handle children's health information, we also put in place a security setup that lets municipalities recommend them to residents with confidence.

Challenges

• Login was cumbersome, so users could not get started smoothly
• A large number of checkup items were displayed as rows of numbers, and results from multiple checkups could not be compared
• Poor usability and low app store ratings were a barrier to expanding adoption among municipalities

What We Did

• Screen design that displays checkup results as graphs so that changes in growth can be compared over time
• Because it is hard to predict when paper checkup results will be digitized, we provided both scheduled imports and imports triggered by the user
• A mechanism for sharing with family members such as grandparents, and for managing data separately for each municipality
• Redeveloped iOS and Android on a single framework to bring their quality into line

Results

• The renewed version has been released, and feedback on its usability has been positive
• With the resident app, the municipal admin panel, and the operator admin panel all in place, the foundation for expanding adoption is ready
• The number of municipalities and users has continued to grow since the renewal

Services That Reach Residents Should Launch in a Stable Form from the Start

When an app is provided to residents through a municipality, every change to its screens or features requires the municipality to explain it to residents. Because frequent changes burden municipalities, in this project we chose to build thoroughly according to plan before release, rather than releasing something small and fixing it afterwards.

With as many as five or six stakeholders, aligning everyone's understanding through words alone was difficult. So before development began, we drew the order of checkup items and the screen layout in a design tool and confirmed them with an interactive prototype before moving on to implementation. For data imports involving external systems, we also first mapped out the flow from paper results being digitized to their appearing in the app, and finalized the integration design. The harder it is to "release first and fix later," the more time spent on design and validation before building leads to development with less rework. The app was released after a trial run in a limited environment.

Our Scope of Work

• Information architecture and UX design
• Visual design
• Design, development, and testing (mobile app, admin panels)
• Infrastructure setup

Client Information

Company Name

Real World Data Co., Ltd.

Business Overview

• Digitizing hospital medical records and health checkup information, and providing services that make use of them

Frequently Asked Questions

Can we ask you just to renew an app that is already live? Yes. This case was a renewal of an existing app. We sorted out the current issues and what the app store ratings were saying, and started by improving usability.

Is it safe to entrust you with sensitive data such as health information? We have a security system based on ISMS (the international standard for information security), and in this case it was one of the deciding factors in our selection. We also built in the authentication mechanism and a design that manages data separately for each municipality from the requirements definition stage.

Can you handle services for municipalities? Yes. In this case, we provided an admin panel for municipalities and took an approach of releasing changes that need to be explained to residents according to plan.

Related Information

• Services for municipalities and the public sector, and renewals of existing apps → System development
• Digitizing and making use of paper-based information → DX promotion support

Related news

• Health Journey, a PHR App Specializing in Infant and School Health Checkups, Has Been Renewed

Go to the contact form