BACKGROUND
Athenahealth's patient portal serves over 50 million patients across 6,300+ practices
From appointment management to billing and care team coordination, the portal caters to various needs of patients.
PROBLEM
Sam, living with EDS, struggles to manage their medications alongside their symptoms on a daily basis — much like many folks with chronic conditions
They manage multiple symptoms as well as medications that include regular, PRN and preventative ones.
DESIGN BRIEF
RESEARCH
Medication non-adherence remains a substantial point of concern for chronic patients overall
50%
patients in the U.S stop taking medications a year after prescription
44-77%
likelihood of patients with multi-morbidity stopping their medications within a year
Why this matters: Adherence to prescribed medications is associated with improved clinical outcomes for chronic disease management and reduced mortality from chronic conditions
Persona Research
For Sam, medication adherence is shaped by symptom uncertainty—not routine
Patients don’t just forget to take medications: they struggle to interpret symptoms, connect them to medications, and communicate that complexity to care teams
This disconnect makes it difficult for Sam to form a clear, holistic understanding of her condition.
"I’m unable to advocate for my symptoms as a whole when I talk to my care team”
— Sam Greene
Portal Audit
Athena’s patient portal supports logistics like appointments and billing, but doesn’t meet the medication management needs of patients with chronic conditions like Sam
DESIGN GOALS
I outlined 3 main design goals based on the current opportunities for addressing non-adherence issues
Athenahealth is uniquely positioned to create a bridge between health tracking apps' info used by folks like Sam and the care teams who coordinate with them to help bring a holistic health snapshot
IDEATION
Early directions ranged from an AI symptom chatbot to a full body map interface; both were eliminated for liability and usability reasons respectively. The directions that made the cut shared a common thread: they worked with existing infrastructure, met patients where they already were, and closed the loop between patient data and clinical visibility.
"Data is overly commodified; can we provide value through enhanced capabilities?"
— Backend engineer, Athenahealth
My discussion with the engineer sparked new ideas regarding valuable capabilities, but it also led me to assess the data available upstream within the Epocrates portal, which is used by clinicians to manage health records and clinic operations.
Finding a wealth of data here made me realize the first step to empowering patients is sharing the valuable information from Athena's clinician-facing platform that could help them learn more about their medications.
DESIGN
A three-pronged approach to improving long-term adherence through surfacing relevant alerts at crucial points in time, surfacing key medication information to make it accessible to patients and encouraging proactive tracking of overall health management through interactive Care Plans.
Push notifications on 30, 60 and 90-day adherence drop-off points
Using existing RxInform infrastructure to launch medication adherence campaigns on key drop-off points like 30, 60, 90-day marks to promote awareness.
"Social Contract" strategy has shown a 20% increase in patient self check-in and portal engagement.
Consistent medication information with symptom-based dosage guidance
Medication information appearing in three different formats across four modules created confusion and eroded trust. Standardizing to a single medication card component, with plain language pulled from Epocrates, gave patients a consistent source of truth regardless of where they encountered their medication information.
Interactive Care Plans to surface real-time goal tracking for care teams linked to Medications
Using interactive Care Plan model to close the loop on plans assigned by care teams to patients; aimed at showing progress to patients and actionable data to keep up motivation, with a focus on how medications play a role in their larger health management journeys.
TESTING
Tracking medications and viewing dosage history was intuitive while viewing dosage instructions was not clear
While 100% of the participants found previous dosage change information for their medications, only 40% succeeded in finding specific, symptom-based dosage instructions due to them being included within an expandable accordion. The accordion was changed to being open by default.
While participants found pain-based medication information and Care Plan activity sharing with care teams useful, some pointed out concerns about Care Plan tracking being invasive
"I usually "wing it" when assessing pain or other symptoms, which can be kind of unreliable; This objective, data-driven measurement is more helpful for assessing where I'm headed over time…"
P2,
round 1 testing
"I also assume that my doctor has access to this info, which is motivating and makes me want to stay on track more so than if the doctor couldn't see"
P3, round 1 testing
"While the Care Plans seemed comprehensive, I was concerned that they were too involved…I kept wondering whether I'd get a little bit less attentive to some of them and kind of stop checking them due to data overload."
P2, round 1 testing
Introducing an opt-in system for Care Plans to help patients find the balance between the data they'd like to share with care teams and manage on their own
IMPACT
Improved Medication Tracking
Tracking
5.0/5
Avg rating for medication tracking features
Adherence
4.2/5
Avg rating for reported motivation to stay on medication course
