We're redesigning the whole system for whole-person healthcare at Tia
From physical to digital, designing for healthcare is full of opportunities for people interested in solving big problems.
At Tia, we know that healthcare is more than just going to the doctor’s office. It’s the feeling of relief you get when your physician assures you that that bump on your neck is no big deal. It’s your aches and pains, how you wake up in the morning, that queasy feeling you get every time you eat cheese. And yet, while healthcare encompasses these bodily, very physical experiences, it’s also about spreadsheets and data, complex medical systems, robotic arms doing surgery on a grape. The integration of digital technology into physical care delivery has so much potential to change the system and finally allow us to take charge of our health.
Anyone who has interacted with our healthcare system knows it needs a lot of help. Historically, the industry has been fragmented, bureaucratic, and antiquated. It’s in dire need of an overhaul, as proven by the absolutely horrendous outcomes of Covid, not to mention the continued usage of the fax machine. Technological advancements have been slow for a good reason — change is a much heavier ask when someone’s life is in your hands. However, we are at a turning point. Healthcare is ripe and ready for a complete redesign — across digital and physical and anywhere in between.
At its core, design is about solving problems to create truly better experiences for people. At Tia, design functions as a bridge, uniting many departments across the whole company. The design team is responsible for creating highly innovative digital products, designing our clinics, and effectively communicating our brand across marketing efforts. We partner with business leads to design products, services, and communications to create one cohesive brand experience, no matter the platform. By spanning these three areas, we ensure that all patient interactions with Tia will look, talk, behave, function, sound, and feel like Tia.
When a patient walks into Tia for an in-person visit, they will have already interacted with us many times. The patient has signed up on our website, booked an appointment, filled out their health information and history, had a virtual appointment. Because we design across the whole patient journey, the experience will be consistent, instead of fragmented and confusing.
And between all of these touchpoints, various technological and human support systems help move the process forward. These include text messages (mostly automated), emails, chats from a Care Coordinator (humans chatting in a digital product), consent forms (digital product interaction), and conversations with providers (humans talking to humans). It can get complicated quickly, but no text message or notification is too small when considering the patient journey. Designing across the whole system allows us to achieve a huge goal: utilization of digital technology as a tool to enable patients and providers to focus on what really matters — healthcare that makes patients feel affirmed, cared for, and heard.
As a Tia patient, you’ll never see a provider sitting behind a computer screen. Instead, you’ll see them using an iPad to review your health information and share information with you on a third screen in the exam room (coming soon!). They can pull up educational information based on the health issues you may be experiencing personally. Debating hysterectomy options? Sure, let’s pull up a diagram and visually explain the options. Wondering if your birth control and your migraines are connected? Let's look at your patterns and figure it out together. Using technology in this way helps patients get a better grasp of what’s going on in their own bodies so they can confidently make the best decisions for themselves. For the first time, a patient might actually understand what they’re being told by a doctor instead of receiving a pedantic and rushed directive to “take these pills, and you’ll be fine.”
Working in healthcare as a designer presents a unique opportunity to blend physical and digital modalities into one cohesive problem-solving practice. Design at Tia includes working in digital, physical, communications, research, service development, community, innovation, workflows, education, architecture, and just about anything in between. Healthcare is big, messy, and broken and therefore provides ample opportunity for designers who are excited about solving big problems through innovative thinking, systematic ideas, and creative solutions — that have real value in their effect on humanity. Our goal is to turn health care into something people actually want to engage with regularly and encourage women to reach their definition of optimal health, as defined by themselves.