Improving How Patients Manage Medications
Healthcare
User Research
WebApp
Company
HealthPrize offers a patient-facing platform that encourages users to log in daily to track their medications. This supports healthcare partners in improving medication adherence, leading to fewer critical health events and healthier patient outcomes.
Challenge
As HealthPrize onboarded a major new client, thousands of new users entered the platform—and an API issue surfaced a critical gap. Many patients had incorrect or outdated medications imported into their accounts, and the platform didn’t support editing, removing, or adding medications at all. These real-life use cases had never been designed for, resulting in frustration, increased support tickets, and preventable abandonment.
Beyond the immediate fix, the larger challenge was creating a medication tracker that better reflected how patients—especially older adults on multiple prescriptions—actually manage their medications and stay safe.
Team
CTO
Product Manager
2x Developers
Skills
UX & Interaction Design
UI Design
Systems Thinking
User Research & Testing
Cross-Functional Collaboration
Understanding the Problem Space
A closer look revealed exactly where the medication experience was breaking down. The system was designed around a one-way API: medications could be imported, but patients had no way to correct or adjust them. I interviewed the support team who was currently dealing with the brunt of the issue, and outlined key patient concerns:
01 Patient Concerns:
API often pulled in outdated medications, or missed medications added recently
When they were imported, limited medication information was provided
Inflexible doseages - all medications were assumed to be taken daily and there was no doseage amount listed
No clear way to add medications
02 System Issues:
Imported medications lacked checks for recency or relevance
Because many of our users are 70+, managing multiple prescriptions, taking medication safely was a primary concern.
User Research
It was clear that the original design had missed the mark, and we at HealthPrize needed to better who our primary user persona is. I conducted four 30-minute interviews with adults aged 50–80 who take multiple long-term prescriptions. In addition, we utilized HotJar to survey our users, to balance a qualitative & quantitative approach.
Research Indicated:
Participants were less interested in using daily reminders on a web platform then we thought. However they loved the idea of having a clear list and overview of medications. Multiple interviewees had 4+ medications
Interviewees all expressed a high degree of concern about taking medications safely, considering possible interactions from multiple prescriptions, varying instructions for dosage
Confidence came from understanding dosages, instructions, and interactions—not from notifications
This highlighted a unique opportunity: providing confidence in our users through understanding.
User interview & customer support team notes laid a groundwork of qualitative findings that needed to be backed with quantitative evidence.
To gain confidence in our findings, we ran a HotJar survey within the patient portal and received 80+ responses. This helped quantify key findings for the redesign - 60% of users wanted more medication information and 80% wanted to maintain a list of their medications.
Competitive Research
I wanted to understand how other modern med tracking applications handle creation & editing flows and examine structure and the mental model expected from users. I selected highly-download & reviewed mobile apps from the app store. These influenced the structure & flow, as well as offered more granular considerations like the form of the medication.
Some applications include powders & injections, which were added into the final design.
Core Problems
`Patients couldn’t correct or manage their own medications, causing high platform abandonment.
Key actions—like “Add Medication”—were difficult to find.
Basic med info like doseage frequency & amount were not imported via API.
Medication creation was limited - the dropdown list only had a fraction of possible meds.
Medication data was inconsistent, and instructions weren’t always clear.
User research pointed out a unique opportunity to us - Provide confidence to users that are highly concerned with medication safety.
Design Process
Empathize with user persona (created during interviews and survey)
Mapped key user flows (e.g., Add Medication, Edit Medication) to clarify system behavior
Explored low-fidelity wireframes to validate early UX decisions
Developed high-fidelity designs with interaction and visual detail
Prepared handoff documentation for engineering
Key Design Decisions
In order to create a flexible feature that actually matches how medications are prescribed, new user flows needed to be created and new data needed to be stored.
01 Add, Edit & Remove
As a solution to a primary problem with the API - Users can add a medication from a robust list of medications, which has a common and default doseage. Allowing for full curation of their medication list.
02 Medication Frequency Based on Prescriptions
Attuned to how medications are actually prescribed, users can select morning, afternoon or evening doseages, whether it be a daily dose or certain days of the week.
03 Doseage Amount & Form
Users can select the doseage amounts and "Form" - which could be liquid, pill, crushed or injection.
04 Common Interactions & Medication Information
Capitalizing on user research findings, patients want to be informed and take their medications as safe as possible. The FDA provides free for commercial use medication guides, which we store in a database and pull in for the users information.
1. Add, Edit & Remove
2. Medication Frequency
Doseage Amount & Form
Common Interactions and Medication Info
