Kaiser Permanente’s User-focused App Redesign Makes It The 2022 Design Company Of The Year
Source: Fast Company, David Salazar
Photo: Kaiser App
Kaiser Permanente’s overhauled website and app put an array of new features and thoughtful user experience at the fingertips of its more than 12 million members.
When healthcare giant Kaiser Permanente was looking for a way to engage its more than 12 million members and encourage them to make better use of its 39 hospitals and 734 medical facilities, it was clear what needed to happen.
“We needed to take a leap in our digital experience,” says Prat Vemana, chief technology officer at the Oakland, California-based company. That leap encompassed a full redesign of its website and member app, which was completed in less than a year by the company’s in-house development team and design firm YML. These efforts earned Kaiser Permanente the Design Company of the Year in Fast Company‘s 2022 Innovation by Design awards. Though this distinction has never gone to a healthcare company before, the impact of Kaiser Permanente’s design-forward approach to improving patient care–particularly in an industry that has not historically prioritized user experience–made it worthy of the recognition.
The overhaul made the app and website far more intuitive and easy to navigate, which was especially necessary given how many new features were added. More than an aesthetic change that uncluttered the navigation experience, the redesign also cleaned up the digital back-end and integrated patient data from various areas of the healthcare experience–benefits, lab results, prescriptions, and even an on-demand urgent care tool called Find Care Now.
Outside of Kaiser Permanente, “these would all be four or five apps that don’t talk to each other,” Vemana says. In a disjointed ecosystem of third-party electronic health records and charts, for Kaiser Permanente members, “the biggest advantage is creating this integrated view [where everything is]all in one place.”
The timing of the overhaul, which began in March 2021, also made delivering critical information about COVID-19 vaccines easier, with members booking 10 million vaccine appointments online in 2021. With both the overhaul and the COVID response, Vemana says, “We had the advantage of pulling a clinical team, an ops team, and an engineering team together and empowering them to go solve a problem.”
Since the redesigned digital tools were introduced, Kaiser Permanente says online appointment booking rose 80% for the year, site visits more than doubled year over year, and member satisfaction with the digital experience rose from 86% to 92% after being unchanged for five years. Vemana also notes that 84% of Kaiser Permanente’s members have registered for digital access, which offers the company a mandate to build out more features.
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Vemana said Kaiser is piloting a feature where a patient who visits one of its facilities and has the app installed on their device will get location-based notifications about services they can take advantage of during their visit, from flu shot reminders to prescription refill alerts.
“[Patients have] adjusted so many things to get there, so we want to make it productive when they’re at the facility,” Vemana says. “That kind of opportunity only happens if we have that integrated data and can connect the dots very quickly.”
This article is part of Fast Company’s 2022 Innovation by Design Awards. Explore the full list of companies creating products, reimagining spaces, and working to design a better world.