Blog | EMIS and MSD are harnessing human-centred design in the fight to eliminate Hepatitis C

To mark World Hepatitis Day on Thursday 28 July, our User Research Manager reflects on how putting people at the heart of the development process has created a product that will help improve health outcomes and support NHS England (NHSE) in eliminating Hepatitis C in England by 2025.

Human-centred design is a problem-solving technique that involves empathising with the people you’re designing for. By keeping your users‘ pain points and needs firmly in mind, you’re able to create innovative new solutions that provide a great experience.

The Product Experience Design team at EMIS [now Optum] are responsible for designing frictionless, innovative and trustworthy product solutions and we employ this mindset when designing all our products. This includes our new product Pathway, powered by EMIS-X®, which we will be launching in line with the Hepatitis C Pathway module. This module will support the identification of those who have a diagnosis or are at greater risk of Hepatitis C, helping to present them to the NHS Operational Delivery Networks (ODNs) so that they can then be placed on the correct clinical pathway and signposted to screening and treatment services being delivered by the NHSE Hepatitis C elimination programme.

When we were first approached by MSD, who are sponsoring the Hepatitis C module, to identify ways we could help to address the challenges the programme had with the identification of patients from primary care, our first objective was to work with the proposed users, people in GP practices and ODNs, in order to understand their roles alongside their current unmet needs and frustrations. MSD and NHSE were great in facilitating access to the ODNs and people with lived experience from the Hepatitis C Trust, we then leveraged our own internal network to speak with GPs.

Having these conversations and sharing some preliminary designs enabled us to map out the entire Hepatitis C pathway process, understand the information needed at each part of the journey and appreciate where things were not working as well as they should. We were also able to gain insight into how the different types of Hepatitis C risk factors determine how patients are prioritised as well as best practice when communicating with patients.

All of this understanding enabled the team to have much more informed conversations about the new Pathway product internally, as well as externally with the sponsor and the steering group of the project, in part because we now had a common language we could all use. It also allowed the team to quickly come to a decision as to what should be included Pathway in order to best support the programme.

We then iterated on the designs in light of the feedback and new understanding in order to create another version that we could then test for usability. To do this, we used Rapid Iterative Testing and Evaluation (RITE) so that issues could be immediately addressed as they were found. This enabled the designs to be amended after each interview, allowing rapid iteration to occur to produce the final designs more quickly.

Final designs were then tested once again with users in order to validate them.

By putting the users at the centre of the design process we were truly able to walk in their shoes, allowing us to quickly adapt when engineering constraints were discovered as we had the knowledge to create alternatives that would be acceptable to users.

Pathway is now in the final stages of engineering and we expect to start our pilot of the Hepatitis C module shortly. However, our work in understanding our users isn’t finished as we will continue to gather feedback throughout the pilot so that we can act quickly when things aren’t going as they should, measure our success, and identify new ideas for the product to support both the Hepatitis C programme and future healthcare challenges.

To find out more about World Hepatitis Day click here.

This article reflects our collaboration with MSD as part of NHS England's Hepatitis C Elimination Programme at the time of publication, and was part of MSD’s committed investment towards the programme. This partnership has since concluded.