Butler for ALL (Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia)
ROLE: PRODUCT MANAGER, DESIGNER, RESEARCHER
06/21 - 12/21
Commercial project completed at A Better Community with Aurora Zhang
SIRIUS
ABOUT THE PROJECT
A digital product that simplified and digitalized family disease management of leukemia patients.
Makes patient family's life easier by simplifying their routine task — tracking patients' symptoms by providing task scheduler, reminder and data input voice input.
Utilizes digital analytics to visualize the symptoms data and highlight abnormal dat
01
Current Chinese Situation in the Field of Critical Illness Relief
The number of medical consultations is fluctuating, major medical assistance is concentrated in specific diseases, and the per capita income cannot match the average expenditure on major diseases.
The basic medical insurance is close to full coverage, and the drugs required for major diseases are gradually added to the Medical Insurance Catalogue, but the medical insurance system for major diseases is still in the preliminary stage.
Regional differences in medical resources are large, with more in the east and less in the west, and the settlement of medical treatment in different places and the graded treatment system are still in the initial stage.
Domain Stakeholders
Government
Promote the development of professionalism in the field of critical illness relief through policy formulation, industry regulation, public services, etc.
Enterprises
Mainly provide assistance in the form of insurance, drugs, equipment and financial support.
Medical Institutions
Mainly participate in critical illness relief by providing professional treatment.
Commonweal Organizations
Mainly provide financial support, but also play a role in service, information, product demand, making up for the pain points and deficiencies of the government and enterprises.
Stakeholder Rescue Mode
Money-Based
Patients proactively contact the foundation and launch a crowdfunding project on an online platform to raise donations from the public.
The foundation set up a special fund and took the initiative to seek patients.
Information-Based
Commonweal organizations build online communication platforms to promote popular science by linking doctors and volunteers.
Commonweal organizations joint government, community, hospital, and school to promote popular science education and disease screening activities.
Service-Based
Commonweal organizations recruit professional medical worker to provide psychological diagnosis and counseling services.
Commonweal organizations provide employment training for patients and cooperate with enterprises to solve the re-employment problem of patients.
Product-Based
Commonweal organizations work with companies to provide commercial insurance products for the disadvantaged with critical illnesses.
Commonweal organizations cooperation with pharmaceutical companies and local volunteer teams to provide pharmaceutical assistance for the patients.
Commonweal organizations work with hospitals to provide educational programs for chronically hospitalized children with serious illnesses, as well as psychological counseling programs for their families.
Policy-Based
Commonweal organizations push the government to include the cost of treatment and drug reimbursement for a particular disease in the national health insurance.
Summary of the Current Challenges
Institutions
Fundraising Issues
Few fundraising professionals in institutions and relatively single fundraising channels.
Funders tend to prefer short and quick relief, resulting in an imbalance of funding/medical resources available for different projects.
Manpower Problems
Insufficient manpower; it is common for one person to be in charge of multiple projects; difficulty and high cost in recruiting staff.
Lack of professional volunteer management system and management talents; the vetting process and training process of volunteers become difficult.
Industry
Lack of inter-industry linkage
Lack of cooperation among industry organizations.
Lack of unified assistance and screening criteria.
Lack of patient awareness
Patients' awareness before and after illness is insufficient, and their focus is mainly on raising money for treatment, and they are not aware of the service and information type of assistance.
High homogenization of project
Financial or resource assistance is the majority, while service assistance is significant but slow to develop
The social awareness of community health worker is low.
02
Narrowing Down the Problem Scope
Problem Analysis
Large number of patients in need of rehabilitation treatment.
Lack of rehabilitation specialist hospitals and beds.
High demand and low supply for caregivers.
Challenges
There is a serious lack of rehabilitation knowledge and rehabilitation caregivers currently provided in the home care phase of the critical illness field.
Users
Patient's Families: They have the most direct access to patients, they have the most urgent needs, and they have more autonomy and ability to seek help than patients.
What is the Opportunity?
User Journey Map
03
Research & Product Goal
We conducted 5 interviews including Leukemia Doctor, Child Charity Specialist, Director of Leukemia Patient Organization and patient families.
Findings
Parents need to track complicated symptoms
Complained about the discontinuity from in-hospital detailed and digitalized record to family handwriting, arbitrary tracking
Diagnosis often struck family with no time to accept, learn and react properly
Certain medication could lead to insufficiency of Calcium, need special recipe to increase Calcium