Designing a mobile app to guide home injections

AT A GLANCE

For patients with severe asthma, a new line of medicines called biologics can potentially have a transformative impact on their day to day life. Such drugs need to be injected every 6 or so weeks, something which can be time consuming and very inconvenient if it must be carried out at a hospital, or doctor’s surgery.

I was the lead UX designer for a concept mobile app to guide home injections and to provide help and advice for server asthma patients. I created a prototype app to be tested with patients and worked with the consultancy to evaluate the concept.

Defining the patient journey

Working with the product team I defined the patient journey, from learning about the service, to using the app to help guide home injections. I co-created a storyboard to help communicate the patient’s journey and experience, and defined the steps and screens required for the mobile app to support this.

Creating a prototype mobile app

Using Axure I designed and created a prototype mobile app to be used during evaluation sessions with severe asthma patients. The prototype was designed to be run on an iPhone to ensure that patients received as realistic an experience as possible.

Mobile app screenshots — I designed and created a prototype mobile app using Axure

Evaluating the concept

Working with a UX consultancy, I helped define the structure for the patient evaluation sessions and observed sessions first hand to see how the concept was received and used.

The results

The patient sessions demonstrated that there is likely to be real benefits from using a mobile app to help guide and remind patients to carry out their home injections. It highlighted many user needs, such as providing information about storing medicine, and about what to do if an injection is missed, or goes wrong. The findings and concept has been handed over to the AstraZeneca product team for further development and evaluation.