In this episode, Teri welcomes Lorraine Chapman, the Senior Director of Healthcare Services at Macadamian Technologies.

Macadamian provides user experience research design and software consulting to the healthcare market. Lorraine heads the healthcare services group which has been specifically focused on healthcare for over 6 years. As part of her role, she provides strategic UX and business direction to digital and connected health companies and providers across the United States and Canada.

The result of Lorraine’s commitment to solving customer problems is a unique ability to harmonize technology with the needs of people who use it. Lorraine’s goal is to make interactions with healthcare (services and technology) easier, satisfying and meaningful for all stakeholders involved, including patients.

Macadamian's Voice First Projects

• More and more clients are going to them directly due to their voice experience. Most of the clients are healthcare companies that have an existing product that they want to integrate voice into.
• Some clients, who include provider networks and other healthcare vendors, approach Macadamian with their own voice first solutions looking to disrupt the market especially in remote health monitoring.
• The solutions are based on medication adherence (for example LifePod, a voice first solution that helps seniors living independently by reminding them to take their medication. The unique part of LifePod is that it doesn’t wait for the senior to wake it up, it instigates a conversation and tracks everything in the background to ensure that a senior actually takes their medication)
• They have also done clinical trial-based projects where they create voice applications that support clinical trial processes for patients. Patients can participate in clinical trials from their homes.

User Experience Challenges or Barriers

• It’s always a challenge for them to design applications that fully incorporate the nuances to our language and the way we interact with people, but their user experience team has a very specific process that they employ to ensure that they overcome that challenge and develop the best quality, easiest and friction-less experience for the target user base.
• Their usage scenarios are very conversational
• They must do usability testing because it’s very crucial when developing a voice application.

My Diabetes Coach

• This is a digital therapeutics application/platform that Macadamian developed in collaboration with CHEO (Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario). The application is for juvenile youth with Type 2 Diabetes.
• CHEO wanted to provide an omnichannel platform for the youth that included a mobile app and a voice first application.
• The platform integrates a lot health related things including integrating directly into a physician’s HER so that they are getting the needed data. It’s also integrated with content management information, weight scales, glucometers, fitbits and others. 
• Juvenile diabetics only see their clinician 1% of the time while they have to deal with it daily so 99% of the time, they deal with it on their own. My Diabetes Coach supports them and their care givers when they are on their own.
• The voice interaction component of it allows the youth to provide information through voice or ask questions.
• Further development of the application/platform is ongoing.
• They have developed an underlying digital therapeutics platform that could be customized for other areas.
• They are still working with CHEO and are planning to go into pilot with patients.
• The application is fully HIPAA Compliant and secure.

Links and Resources in this Episode

• LifePod
• My Diabetes Coach
• Macadamian’s Website
• Lorraine’s Email

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