Lumedic Connect

Designing at the End of the World

Company - Lumedic / Providence

Problem - Covid 19 has stopped the world from spinning. We work for a hospital system, how can we help?

Lumedic

December 2019, I was hired at Lumedic, a small company focused on interoperability in the healthcare industry.

The hospital system Providence St. Joseph had recently purchased a large stake in the company and wanted to flaunt it as a thought leader in healthcare tech.

Lumedic was heavily focused on engineering and technical research. They had only recently begun building product and design practices.

The Lumedic Exchange & Lumedic.ID

Early research was being done on a product on Digital Identity verification for the Healthcare space. A coalition was forming around Healthcare systems and like-minded companies looking at the space and trying to create a set of standards.

A prototype named Lumedic.ID, was developed as a POC for the protocol.

Problem

Sars Covid-19

March 2020, Cases in WA have become cases in every state, things are becoming serious. We all head home from the office. Our partners at Providence can not provide healthcare outside of emergency services.

Opportunity

  • We have Lumedic.ID sitting on the back burner as a protocol for verifying personal data.

  • We know testing and eventually vaccines will come.

  • There is immense pressure to start rolling out various early POCs from the Exchange as solutions...

Challenges

  • Nobody had successfully deployed Sovereign Data systems in a consumer app in Healthcare at this intended scale before.

  • Lumedic had never delivered product to patients, they were primarily an interoperability services company whose users were technicians. Now we were morphing into a Healthcare Product Company with a multi-sided user base.

Goals

Initial Goal

Get our healthcare partners back to work via a verifiable system of sharing Covid-19 testing history with healthcare providers.

Post-Vaccine Goal

Share patient vaccination records with partner businesses so that daily life can resume safely. Large gatherings and confined spaces could feel safe to attend.

Research & Design

Research

We immediately started a comprehensive research process to attack the problem from a product first mindset. We needed to move beyond being an interoperability technology company.

Research Plan

  1. Meet with Doctors and Administrators

    Start to discover the processes and problems associated with the operational caregiving. What are the expected issues and unforeseen complications?

  2. Visit Clinics and Testing Sites

    Get boots on the ground and witness what these sites are like. Gain understanding of the rate of throughput and where we will be adding friction.

  3. Understand the EMS and Ledger systems

    This is not a traditional Web 2.0 API call. Design needed learn how Digital Identification systems worked.

    What is our SLA? Who knows the impact of having to have all these systems perform cutting edge handshakes and verification.

Archetypes and Challenges

Designs

This was an incredibly complex design problem.

  1. What Object Metaphor? - Badges, Cards, Files...

    How do we model the visual metaphor for end users in a way the leverages resonance?

  2. Addressing security concerns at all stages.

  3. Who presents the QR code? Who who scans it?
    Which direction of that interaction feels more safe? Which one is faster in a queue?

  4. The Digital Identity ledger approach is completely different than “The Cloud”

    We just spent 10 years getting everyone on board with “The Cloud”, how do you make users understand that the record is on their phone and only their phone? How do we convince them that is a value add?

  5. The term wallet was somewhat new.

    1. Most users associated that term to Apple Pay type apps.

Proof of Concept to Product

We were provided with a bare bones technical POC and by the end of the project we were responsible for designing and shipping four applications across web and mobile.

How it started

Final Apps

Design Challenge Deep Dive - Who Scans Who?

One of the toughest problems to solve was when initiating the handshake between a verifier (someone who wants to know your vaccination status) and holder (a patient or user trying to share their vaccination status) was who would present the QR code and who would scan it.

While the digital handshake was the same either way our research showed that it greatly impacted user trust and understanding. We made the suggestion of the Wallet app presenting the code, but the POC was not built for that, so the decision was delayed

Wallet App Presents QR code

User Feedback

  • “Feels familiar, like showing and ID or Ticket”

  • “Feels like I am choosing to share something”

  • “Feels like I am in control of my data”

Issues

  • Healthcare Provider needs a tablet or phone to scan the holders phone

  • The underlying POC technolgy was not built to do it this way

Wallet App Presents QR code

User Feedback

  • “Feels like I am buzzing somebody into my house”

Issues

  • The screen that presents QR code displays the information - HIPPA issues and not ergonomic

  • Best version would be a two screen solution, which is expensive.

Product

The final product suite was comprised of four applications and various background protocols.

Provider Web App

A web app for healthcare workers to bulk upload the information for the patients they vaccinated during their shift. They could download a .csv formatted for our purposes and then upload the file here. This allows for the credential to be issued to the patient.

This was a MVP stopgap in lieu of an Epic (EMR) integration that would pull that information directly from patient records.

Patient (Holder) Wallet - Mobile App

A mobile (IOS & Android) application for patients to validate their identity, receive credentials, and start the verification process with a third party on the system.

Most verbs the users could perform were consent based.
YES/NO - share my credential
YES/NO - send me my credential
YES/NO - connect to a verifier

Patient Web App

A web portal for users to check to see if the provider had registered their credentials in the system. If the credential was present it would kick off the process of issuing those credentials to the patient.

An added complication was that this process could be kicked off by either the patient or the provider. The same verification process was recreated inside the wallet app if the provider started the process. Confusing!

Verifier Web App

A web application for verifiers (businesses or hospitals) to request and receive verified information from “holders” or patients. A patient would scan a barcode via their wallet app and be prompted to OK sharing with the verifier. If it existed, the record would appear on the screen.

Outcomes

Pac Med

Lumedic Connect successfully launched across the PacMed network, which included 9 outpatient clinics serving over 200 providers and thousands of patients.

Connect was deployed at some of the earliest COVID-19 testing and vaccination sites throughout 2020 and 2021.

Attention

The product gained regional attention, highlighting both Lumedic and Providence as leaders in health technology.

Seattle Symphony

Lumedic Connect was the mechanism for validating vaccine status that allowed the return Gala of the Seattle Symphony

Forbes Blockchain 50

Forbes added Providence and Lumedic to their Blockchain 50. Much of this was a result of a pivot to using the app to speed up insurance Prior Authorization. We were able to accomplish this due to maintaining a design that was ready to control and share any sensitive health date and not just vaccine status.

Tegria / Advata Acquisition

Connect was the key reason behind Lumedic being merged into Providence’s for-profit technology company Tegria (later Advata).

The Lumedic Design Team was to be crucial for developing products in the new Tegria portfolio, as no other company offered a similar capability.