Removing Burden to Enable Mental Health Access

A tool that helps participants understand the mental health care they need while directly connecting them to providers accepting new patients.

The Johns Hopkins Healthcare Solutions team identified access to mental healthcare services as a key need arising from the pandemic. Healthcare Solutions — which leverages Johns Hopkins science to create commercial ventures that improve health outcomes — partnered with Johns Hopkins providers to build a tool that helps participants understand the mental health care they need while directly connecting them to providers accepting new patients and their insurance.

Balance, a therapist-supported digital behavioral health program, is delivered to employers for use with employees and is built on customizable vendor software.

Balance includes:

• Personalized mental health surveys and results
• An AI-driven Chatbot
• Educational content
• Access to a care concierge who can use results for connecting participants with the right services

Healthcare Solutions asked customers to test the Balance platform and realized they needed a team with healthcare-specific user experience skills to help them make the digital tool burden-free. Harriet Martyn, Director of Product Development at Healthcare Solutions, heard feedback from her support desk that participants were having trouble connecting their Fitbits, and health coaches were getting questions about how to use the system. Many participants were starting, but not completing the initial intake survey on the platform.

“We didn’t have anyone who could actually do those mockups of the entire platform and help us think through the user experience really well. Having that unbiased experience for us was really helpful.”
— Harriet Martyn, Director of Product Development at Healthcare Solutions

The Technology Innovation Center (TIC) design team joined Martyn’s team to provide user experience recommendations and create new mockups based on design research techniques. They guided the team through reducing the user interface noise by promoting consistency, simplifying workflows for participant onboarding, and reorganizing the main dashboard on the platform to provide more opportunities for direct participant action.

“It’s all more seamless and less onerous for participants,” says Martyn about the dashboard once it was completed.

The TIC design team also adjusted and applied the work done on the Balance dashboard to the Blossom dashboard (on the same platform). Blossom is a similar program offered by employers for pre-diabetes and diabetes management.

Healthcare Solutions rolled out the redesigned platform in October 2021 and has since seen a reduction in support tickets and questions to coaches. The TIC design team plans to continue the engagement in 2022.

“I think it all looks a lot cleaner and more professional,” says Martyn. “We are still eager to work with the TIC to make further improvements.”