Designing a hospital's patient-facing mobile app around engagement

You are designing a mobile app for a hospital, and the priority is patient engagement. What features should the app have? Explain who you are building for, what engagement means in this context, which features you would build first and why, and how you would know they work. ```hint Define engagement first Decide what an engaged patient does differently and why the hospital benefits, then trace one patient's path through their care to find where they drop out of it. ``` ### Clarifying Questions - Which patients: people coming in for scheduled outpatient visits, emergency department visitors, patients during an inpatient stay, or patients recovering at home after discharge? - Is this a new app, or new features for an app the hospital already offers for basics such as appointments, test results and bills? - Why does the hospital care about engagement: patient satisfaction scores, fewer missed appointments, better outcomes after a stay, or revenue? - Is the app for one hospital system, or a product that serves many hospitals? ### What a Strong Answer Covers - A definition of patient engagement tied to an outcome the hospital cares about - Patient segments compared, with one chosen and the reason - Pain points drawn from that segment's care journey and ranked by severity - Features prioritized with explicit criteria, including clinical safety, privacy and the workload they put on staff - Success metrics with guardrails, and the main risks with mitigations ### Follow-up Questions - Some of your features need nurses or doctors to respond. How would you get staff to support them without overloading them? - How would the app serve older patients, patients with low literacy, or patients without a smartphone? - How would you show the app caused better results rather than simply attracting patients who were already engaged?