Powering Medical Residency Administrators with Automated Scheduling
How I saved administrators, 82% of their time and be more productive.
Overview
MedHub is a leading provider of healthcare education management solutions for graduate and undergraduate medical education. 48% of MedHub users are currently using third-party tools in conjunction with Scheduling Capability.
The aim of this project is to drive adoption by offering an automated scheduling solution that streamlines workflows for residency administrators.
ROLE
Lead Designer
RESPONSIBILITIES
End-to-End Design Strategy, UX & UI design Process,
Successful Design Delivery
COLLABORATORS
UX Design, Innovation, Product, Business (3 Brands), Research Ops,
Clinical Institutions, Design Systems, Accessibility (A11y),
Data Science and Engineering
TIMELINE
Q2 - Q4 2023
Impact
I have contributed to a large-scale impact - saving program administrators 1200+ hours.
82% Administrative Time
Achieved 82% reduction in time spent on manual administrative process
40% Task Completions
Increase task completion efficiency by 40% through automation and workflow improvements.
Administrator Satisfaction
Improve satisfaction scores by 30% within the last 4 months
The Customer Problem
Administrators are unable to use existing features due to the increase in manual effort in gathering data to schedule clinical rotations, leading to delayed operations within programs.
Research
UNDERSTANDING THE PROBLEM SPACE
I led a two-day workshop to understand the problem space, identify user pain points and opportunities to solve administrators problem using automation with the key collaborators from multi-disciplinary teams. Brainstorming the problem space uncovered three questions
Project Framing Workshop
01
How might we help admins navigate and orient easily regardless of how many products they use?
02
How might we minimize the administrator’s preparation required to get clinical data into MedHub?
03
How might we simplify the process for scheduling shifts and rotations?
QUALITATIVE INTERVIEWS
"
I see limitation to how much all tech could be integrated into one platform. We have given up on this idea because people will likely struggle to transfer or prefer previous system
- Program Administrator
"
We have more tools that we are asking people to use than we would like to. I think everyone would love to have a single system that they can use for everything.
-Program director
RESEARCH INSIGHTS
After conducting 30+ qualitative interviews and synthesizing the research, we learned that there is
Disconnect Between Clinical Availability & Scheduling
Manual & Labor-Intensive Scheduling
Heavy Reliance on Excel & Duplicate Efforts by Team
Siloed Features & Limited Access
Overwhelmed & Burnout
DEFINING GOALS
After a series of collaborative design workshops with technology, data science, and product teams, we established clear, admin-centric goals that aligned with the broader business objective—driving increased usage and adoption of the scheduling feature while enhancing efficiency and productivity.
Empower program administrator with streamlined planning by leveraging an integrated framework to eliminate silos between tasks
Reduce program administrator’s angst of scheduling rotations with automation to eliminate duplicative efforts
Collaborative working space when drafting schedules to work off real time updates.
EARLY EXPLORATION
With our goals defined, I started doing some competitive analysis of companies with similar communication experiences to learn who was doing it well, who wasn't, and what the best practices might be.
Opportunity Gaps
COLLABORATIVE SCHEDULING
Admins need to communicate on the scheduling data
Tigerconnect: Offers Clinical collaboration software platform
Biosked: Offers collaborative scheduling software
Rule-Based Automation
Admins need to communicate on the scheduling data
Biosked: Automatically allocate resources according to scheduling needs
Lightning Bolt: Balances the needs of the residents schedule
Once I was aware of commonalities and best practices of successful communication platforms, I started whiteboarding out some ideas wireframing concepts for rapid iteration and exploration. I used these sketches and wireframes to communicate with my Product Manager and Lead developer what I thought and align with a direction before moving into wireframes.
Design Iterations
WIREFRAMES REVISED
Version 1 | Planner and Scheduler
Testing the solution
After initial iterations, the first version of the smart scheduler tested with 30+ participants validated that the idea of draft spreadsheet reduced the manual effort of scheduling rotations. However, it uncovered the variation in rules and regulations by program and by institution.
"
Our program requires additional regulations on the shifts schedule
- Program Administrator
"
It's more than Resident's absence requests. We want to to allow them share their preferences too.
- Program Administrator
"
My coordination with fellow program admins goes end to end right planning through approval.
- Program Administrator
Final Solution
Smart Scheduler
Access to all the key data to plan and track next steps
Pre-loaded clinical availability with integrated with external clinical scheduling system
Connecting the who, what, when, where, and how with the new schedule planner.
Activities
Curriculum connected to the scheduling workflow
Rule Based Scheduling
Customize rules based on program preferences
Scheduler
Effortlessly match activities and shifts with available resources
Collaborative workspace
Collaborate to share drafts among colleagues, make comments and edits inside the platform
Key Decisions
CHALLENGE
30% of the Medical institutions indicated technology constraints.
Flexible offering to support constraints in connecting clinical data into the system
SOLUTION
CHALLENGE
Adoption for existing vs new users as the new “Scheduler
“Front door” portal as a landing page for users to onboard new users
SOLUTION
CHALLENGE
Merge with another business partner “BoardVitals”
Followed unified design system for Ascend and aligned with MedHub brand style guide
SOLUTION
Impact & Outcomes
I have contributed to a large-scale impact - saving program administrators 1200+ hours.
82% Administrative Time
Achieved 82% reduction in time spent on manual administrative process
40% Task Completions
Increase task completion efficiency by 40% through automation and workflow improvements.
Administrator Satisfaction
Improve satisfaction scores by 30% within the last 4 months