Patient-facing information hub -
Responsive web application and deployment into public domain.
Brooke Road Surgery is a medical clinic and part of the British National Health Service covering Hackney in London. I was tasked with establishing their own web presence. The project’s main goal was to reduce repetitive phone queries from patients seeking basic information (opening times, registration procedure, etc.). The website would also provide an opportunity for the surgery to communicate digitally as a readily accessible noticeboard for its patients where the main NHS website would not suffice.
Working mostly on my own, I met with the principal physician of the clinic, the main stakeholder and representative liaison for the project, to understand the needs for his organisation. A series of short interviews were conducted in-situ with waiting patients to collate the types of information they sought from their clinic, ensuring a user-centred design process was employed. Based on government legislation, there were also requirements to have micro-data points made transparent on the site such as revealing doctor salaries.
Over a series of weeks, task analyses informed the basic information architecture of the site, validated with regularly scheduled meetings with the stakeholder. I coded HTML prototypes based on a bootstrap template and building upon this, a suitable prototype evolved into the final website. Fulfillment of the original goals set out were qualitatively assessed with users once completed to ensure a satisfactory outcome.
Synchronising integration with Google Maps, the project went live at the beginning of 2017. Internally monitored metrics reported an increase in the size of the practice’s patient base by approximately 12% since deployment. Both staff and patient satisfaction were improved; this was reported back informally by word of mouth to the stakeholder and was attributed to the reduction in menial enquiries being received by the practice by phone and in-person.