Live project done in collaboration with NHS 24, part of NHS Scotland.
For this project, we explored the 111 hotline. This is the main service provided by NHS 24. It provides access to out of hours urgent healthcare advice across all Scotland, and even though this is done through telephone lines, it provides users with human contact.
Furthermore, it is a service that requires constant multitasking with different hotlines from NHS 24, which puts the 111 service under more pressure.
With all this, if faces constant challenges, being the multitasking one of them, alongside with receiving up to 200 calls per hour, having 80% of the calls not being actually urgent and having to access all these with precision and quality, when the actual interaction with the users is short lived.
So, after the initial research, we engaged with users, non-users and staff of the 111 service, through quick street questionnaires, interviews and reviews in online portals, to obtain information and evidence of their experiences. This led us to be able to construct a user journey and a service blueprint, where we could see the pain points of the service and where the most dissatisfaction comes from.
By the end of the project, we proposed to the NHS 24 a reframing of the 111 service, with the introduction on a Personal Logbook, that shifts the service from a short term interaction and one time contact to a continuares care service, that want to help people keep track of their health care, appointments, medications and medical history, allowing people to look back on their registry and repeat treatments without having to call 111 for reoccurring non-urgent conditions.
Also, we proposed a text service as well, backed with AI technology, to keep the waiting time updated to the users, and allow them to engage with conversations in this time, receiving self help advice and possibility to use in the future as an alternative to calling the service. These new touchpoints will expand the tele-healthcare service to an accompanied and more personalised service that is present at any moment in users lives, in a meaningful communicative experience.
MDes. Design Innovation and Service Design at The Glasgow School of Art, with NHS 24. 2018.
Project done with Ga Eun Ku, Muchun Liu, Shiying Hui and Xiao Deng.
