In this page, I’ll walk you through the scope and different phases of product development that I am focusing on, as well as my responsibilities and my approach to solving problems in this role.
My Role:
I lead product strategy, design, development, operations, vendor management, and analytics for a Remote Patient Monitoring Consumer iOS App called Pulse.
Scope & Goal
Upon joining Heal, I performed an audit of the existing RPM app, which had very limited capabilities and a low engagement rate. My goal was to uplift the experience, introduce net new features that add value to patient’s life and drive business value and ultimately increase the engagement rate.
Business Metrics & KPIs
A good product manager needs to understand the business goal behind any new product. Upon joining Heal, I spent time understanding different business lines, the value each brings to the business, and how my product, the RPM tool, evolved and played a role in the larger ecosystem. I reviewed existing metrics to understand the baseline. A series of vision settings and ideation sessions with different stakeholders got conducted to understand the North Star metrics. After weeks of discovery, I established the key KPIs that are critical for my product:
- Attribution - Number of patients that have chosen Heal as their primary care provider over the past enrollment cycle
- Attrition - Number of patients who leave Heal as their primary care provider over the past enrollment cycle
- Engagement - Amount of time patients/users spend on the tool interacting with different modules
- Visit Completion - Number of visits completed per patient over the course of a year
After identifying the core OKRs, I measured the baseline for each of these categories and established a cadence with leadership to report on these metrics.
Discovery & Research
The existing RPM tool, known as Hub, was designed for chronic disease management. Its features were limited to vital recording using auxiliary devices communicating via Bluetooth to Heal Software housed on an Android tablet. The tablet and the pre-paired peripherals got shipped to patients.
I started by learning the existing user base and using quantitative (surveys) and qualitative studies (interviews and ethnography sessions). I learned their pain points and synthesized the insights, defined the opportunity areas, and bucketed them based on short-term goals achievable and addressable by enhancements to the existing product and longer-term goals, which requires a redesign and possible hardware and software net new builds.
We also did competitive research to learn from existing health portals and RPM tools in the market and define the value proposition and differentiating features for our product. I learned that a lot of pain points faced by our patients were hardware limitations (Mason Tablet), and we decided to switch to iOS development and partner with Apple to build a native iOS App which can be shipped on Heal-provided iPads to patients, or it can be downloaded from the app store. We decided to build with cross-platform and Android compatibility in mind.
Roadmap
After extensive research, we defined the core pillars of experience, which are as follows.
- Vital recording
- Medication Adherence
- Appointment and Visit Reminders
- Patient-facing and physician Health records and vital trends
- Payments and consent
We decided to develop an MVP that offers a basic flow for each of these core functionality and release it to the early adopter population and, based on the learnings, expand the scope and user base.
Operations
Since my role at Heal was beyond just product manager, I had to own and streamline the operational and inventory management processes. I performed an audit of all aspects of operations from procurement, pairing, packaging, shipping, and installation. Identified the bottlenecks and improved the processes to increase the delivery fulfillment time by 35% and inquiry resolution time by 20%. I conducted vendor analysis and switched to iOS tablets, with Flutter/Swift development approach to unlock better user experience for the patients.
Partnerships
When it comes to partnerships, hardware needs in the Pulse program were completely outsourced. As I mentioned earlier, our software is housed on a tablet that gets shipped to patients, and all vital recording devices are paired to the tablet and tailored to the patient’s needs and conditions. I conducted research and curated a new suite of biometric peripherals, including wearables, sleep, and activity trackers, creating a new ecosystem that doubled the number of biometrics captured by Pulse. I also switched to iPads instead of Mason tablets and partnered with Apple to secure those.
Building a team of engineers, QA, and Designers
Since we were expanding the product and tech team at Heal and we were developing a couple of major in-house tools (including a state of art EHR system). I had to hire and build a team of engineers, QA, and design to support the Pulse process. In late 2021 and early 2022, hiring engineers in-house was a major challenge, and I had to augment with a mix of outsourced engineers. I worked with a series of agencies that help recruit and hire talent domestically and internationally and finally onboarded engineers based in Brazil and hired a designer in-house to support the work.
Prototyping, Usability Testing & Development
In order to make sure our design is meeting the needs of our users, we developed clickable prototypes to test with our existing patients and potential adopters to improve and enhance the flows and UX based on the Input and learnings. We repeated this process to make sure that our final designs are refined and provided the optimal experience for our patients before starting development.
Collaborators & Partners
Paul Lafata, Curtis Freeman, Anthony Parsad