1. Hold users accountable

No matter how great the program is, if there is nobody whom you report to, you will be prone to skipping the tasks or homework assignments and choosing the path of less resistance.

How to include it?

Having 15 min check-in sessions a week will make a user/patient feel responsible for the actions taken and not taken and for the quality of the results.

2. Visualize the treatment plan and steps

Gentle onboarding and letting your users/patients know how the treatment will go and what they should expect from the product or treatment program will make them more engaged and educated about the treatment plan.

How to include it?

A simple patient orientation brochure outlining the main treatment questions helps patients keep track of what is happening.

Another great way to reduce ambiguity and stress in the early stages of the treatment process is to create a simplified schedule of the next steps.

BetterUp product offering

3. Decrease the time till the first intake

People who are making important decisions that will affect the way they behave are more likely to step back and hesitate. Everything that can be done as quickly as possible from the business side, should be done so.

How to include it?

If you can collect the needed information in your booking flow online — perfect.

If you can discuss all matters during the initial call and start treatment the very same day— do so.

The fewer steps and iterations there will be, the more people will finish the flow and start the treatment.

Noom collects all information about the user in the booking flow

4. Start with the basic product

You may know numerous ways how your solution will help the target audience. But if they are looking for something different, often simpler and faster, you should keep in mind their jobs to be done.

How to include it?

We know that most people are looking for faster ways out of depression or addiction. They do not want long discussions and weeks with the therapist before they start feeling better. What they want is medication as soon as possible to feel better.

Promoting extensive programs and therapy in the first place might not activate them. Instead, appealing to their jobs to be done in our ads — becoming sober or calm, will do. It doesn’t mean that you can’t discuss outpatient programs later on.

5. Show medical providers’ faces

Therapy is provided by real people, not blind systems. Engage with users the way a human person would:

• write corporate emails “from a therapist”:

Email from Cerebral

• show photos of the medical providers on the website and include introductory videos if possible:

Block from BetterUp website

6. Find a patient’s personal spark

Personalization is the next biggest trend in healthcare, even if it is simple skincare products sold online. And while therapy with a doctor involves a personal touch, web-based healthcare products often do not.

How to include it?

Ask patients about their personal values and what motivates them to finish the treatment successfully. This can include a plain journal in the app or a card in the welcome box where users can write a few lines to their future self to be able to review it when they finish the treatment.

Also, don’t forget about emotions in the UX copy across your mediums:

A hero screen from Tempest website

Show faces of the people, share feelings they experience during the treatment:

A block from AbleTo website

Block from Coa website

7. Personalize where possible

Collect the preferences of the patients beforehand to improve the client experience.

How to include it?

Ask what gender of a therapist they would prefer, the language, the color of skin, time when they are available for the therapy, and sometimes even age and religion.

Headway marketplace

8. Offer a behavior contract

You may have heard about behavioral contracts, those agreements in which people describe the consequences and awards of their specific behaviors and sign this paper.

How to include it?

Introduce behavior contracts when people have to make significant changes to their behavior for a specified amount of time:

9. Introduce repeatable processes

Multiple check-ins with a nurse practitioner, care operations team, therapist assignments… How can you keep in mind all of that? Having an understandable and simple flow that is repeated weekly or monthly will make patients more coherent. Having it written somewhere will help keep all the patients aware of the process.

Another way to help people make decisions less often is by using 3 or 6 months subscriptions:

Ro Pharmacy product offering

How to include it?

Minimize the number of steps a patient has to take and share the documented operations with them. Pricing tables should be easy to access, with no need to find a price for a specific service in a 20-page document or a huge table, or even worse — to clarify it every time with a care provider.

10. Remind often

Some events are scheduled a week or more beforehand, which means a patient may forget about it and miss the appointment. Send the reminders automatically, numerous tools can help you make this process seamless.

How to include it?

Send reminders and make sure patients show up. You can use patient engagement solutions like Luma Health or PatientPop.

Email from Ohpelia

11. Announce the rules aloud

If there is an element of group therapy, you want to make sure everybody has a clear understanding of the boundaries. Verify that everybody accepts the rules before the treatment starts:

12. Keep it fun

Therapy is often something people do not enjoy, and adding elements of gamification and fun might help them ease the pressure. A few bright elements and illustrations will brighten up the simple formal clinical style:

Block on Real website

13. Collect contextual feedback

It’s best to collect the feedback concerning the recent events a person has just experienced: a medication delivery, or introductory session, or a therapy group session. Send a survey after the event:

14. Show the progress visually

While the treatment process can be long and exhausting, it is important to pay attention to the progress already made.

How to include it?

During each meeting, or regularly in the app or via email, ask users to write down what, even the smallest, changes happened during the past days/weeks. Ideally, users do so directly in the app or in a document form or write it down in real-time during the meeting.

Brightside patient portal

15. Design for relapse prevention

If there is a chance that something goes wrong, it will.

Plan for relapses by talking about them with your users, mapping solutions that will help patients if they are on the edge, and making relapses a part of the normal process, not something awful out of blue.

How to include it?

Some examples of how healthcare startups implement this:

• the specific time during group and 1:1 sessions dedicated to talking about relapses and how to deal with them,

• cheat sheets that outline activities to prevent relapses, stages, and the way to deal with the past relapses,

• sharing stories of real people, on the blog or via email, that help people to get back to feeling empowered after going through the relapse.