Improving personalisation of our service through advanced technology
Advancing technology and a drive to deliver the best user-centred services is something that’s becoming increasingly important in providing support at scale for those managing long term health conditions.
What are we trying to do?
Through Parkinson’s Connect, we’re striving to provide a much more personalised service that gives people the opportunity to find their own information (something we’ve heard regularly as part of our research) but also reaches out to them when they are less able to reach out themselves.
That’s where the new online “proactive check-in” element of our service comes in, which focuses on the need to be reached out to, with the value of advancing tech to give people the information they need when they need it. Built in partnership with other charities and a digital partner, the Digital Health Assistant (DHA) uses machine learning to match an individual to information relevant to their situation and deliver this in regular emails. The quality of the match will increase over time with use and feedback. We’re also planning to improve what we offer to those without email access in the near future, so watch this space.
What have we learned so far?
As with everything we’re doing, the ‘’go live’ is just a small part of the product journey, but it’s a useful time to reflect, learn and refocus. Here are a few things that we’ve picked up so far:
- Reaching out to people is important
People living with Parkinson’s tell us that every day is different, some are more difficult than others, and at times, finding support for yourself is hard. It’s often felt that they need to take control of the ups and downs, but sometimes, it does need a prompt in the right direction. We need to show people that we’re there for them, offering emotional support and useful information that can help bring back to what they can do to help manage their condition.
2. Where, when and how people find information is as important as what it says
We’ve built up such a great bank of content and information over the course of a number of years, working with experts, volunteers, people with Parkinson’s and their family and friends. But as we’ve been working through the content for our proactive check in (and upcoming self-serve tool), we’ve heard time and again that our target audiences are not finding the information they need. Our ambition is to make our content as accessible as possible for our increasingly diverse audiences. We’ve got a long way to go but part of it is about bringing information in different formats and putting it in front of people in different ways, including via email.
3. Finding the balance between directing and supporting is hard
It’s our responsibility to help people manage their diagnosis, and at times, what they might not want to hear is exactly what they need to. But, on the flip side, we need to be careful that we don’t stop someone from seeing something they want that doesn’t fit a strict criteria. This is a huge consideration for a data-driven piece of technology. That’s why we’ve kept lots of our information more broad to start with, and as we build a better understanding of how people are responding to it, we can look at how best to target them.
4. End to end user involvement is key
We started off with a discovery phase around the Digital Health Assistant as well as the wider Parkinson’s Connect service and it helped us add some definition to the first version. We also asked what information people expected to see and how we might position some of the personal questions we ask. Usability testing on the tool gave us a sense on how the designs were working and any language issues we needed to think about. But even with all that, we’re expecting lots more feedback on what we put out and that is what will make this even better in the future. I wouldn’t dare predict what we’ll hear but that’s the world of live products!
4. Innovative tech has a role to play in scaling services to support more people
Parkinson’s Connect is being designed to increase the reach of our services to lots more people, and with that comes a lot of support to provide. With an increasing focus on the role of tech in most aspects of life, there’s huge potential for this to help give people a better experience from diagnosis than they might get through other online routes. We want to keep pushing the boundaries in how we use what’s out there or on the horizon to provide the best offer we can.
What’s next?
Going live is only the beginning, and there is an exciting future ahead for the product itself and the wider service that we’re building on. So we’ve got lots more things we want to start learning. Here’s just a few:
- How well understood is what we’re offering and how many people are signing up?
- What’s the most popular content that people view, what’s received well and what needs work?
- Who else is interested in receiving information like this and how different is the information they want?
- How quickly can we reach the right number of people so we can most effectively use machine learning to drive even greater personalisation?
- How does it sit for people alongside the rest of our service that we’re developing and improving?
- And how do we reach those without access to email?
The learnings that we start to build here won’t just be useful for the Digital Health Assistant itself, but also the wider service offer and other parts of it that we’ll be building and improving in the coming months. And we’ll also be looking to apply the learnings from other places too, like our new self-serve tool and existing people-led services, to ensure our service is centred around the people who are using it.
Joe, Product Manager
