Centro Médico IM

Getting a medical appointment causes stress, anxiety and lost time, especially when you’re left waiting on a call. The centre only offered phone bookings.

During research I focused on improving patients’ experience when booking an appointment at the centre’s branches. My goal was to find a way to improve the appointment system and create real synchronisation between patient and specialist.

Goals

• Improve the centre’s appointment system, which today only works over the phone.
• Understand patients’ real needs before proposing a solution.
• Go beyond the appointment: give each patient a place to keep track of their health.

I wrote an interview guide from an umbrella of ideas with three axes: patients’ behaviour, their needs and their attitudes towards online healthcare.

• Behaviour

  • How often do you book a medical appointment?
  • Do you call to book your appointments?
  • How long have you waited on those calls?
  • Do you use an app for your medical visits?

• Needs

  • Do you need to track your appointments on your device?
  • Do you keep a record of past appointments?
  • How do you keep track of your appointments today?
  • How is your doctor–patient relationship?

• Attitudes

  • What do you think about online healthcare?
  • Would you book your next appointment online?
  • Would you keep track of your health in an app?
  • Have you had a bad experience booking online?

First observations

• “I don’t track my health, but I’d like to start and have my medical history available.”
• “The public system doesn’t offer many ways to track your health: I have no idea when my gynaecology check-up is.”
• “Some online health apps are very basic.”
• “I always book restaurants online.”

Benchmark

I analysed public and private appointment apps, such as the Community of Madrid’s health appointment app and HM Hospitales’, to understand what patients expect from a health app.

Insight: patients need to keep track of their medical appointments by specialty, in a practical way that is always at hand. A medical diary.

To make it actionable, I tested it against four questions: does it inspire? Is it new? Did we learn something? Does it address the business problem?

The proposal

An easy-to-understand online appointment system, organised by specialty, with access to the medical history from the device the patient uses every day.

With what I learned in the interviews, I defined two user personas who represent patients needing ongoing medical follow-up.

The main flow is booking an appointment: the patient signs in or registers, lands on a home screen with search and shortcuts, chooses specialty, centre, specialist and date, and gets a summary of the appointment.

1. 01Access

   • Sign in
   • Registration with data validation

2. 02Home

   • Search
   • Book an appointment and symptom check

3. 03Appointment

   • Nearest centre
   • Specialty, specialist and date

4. 04Confirmation

   • Appointment summary
   • Add to calendar

To present the proposal I turned the flow into low-fidelity wireframes, showing the app’s structure before the visual design. The booking form unfolds step by step and suggests the centre closest to the patient’s location.

Wireframes

• Sign in
• Home
• Centre and specialty
• Appointment booked

Visual identity

The interface builds on the centre’s identity: a calm, bright healthcare turquoise and a logo that joins a crown with the medical cross. I designed the sign-in screen in high fidelity so the centre could see how its app would feel.

This discovery work was the basis for pitching the project to the medical centre: the research, insight, personas and flow proved the problem and shaped the solution. The proposal included a roadmap for the next phase:

• Validate with patients

  Test the booking flow with patients like Lydia and Gema before investing in visual design.

• High fidelity

  Take the full flow to high fidelity with the centre’s identity.

• Medical diary

  Design the medical history and tracking by specialty: the heart of the insight.