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DesignMeets ARCTRN

Helping Chronic Pain Patients and their Physicians Access Care

TAPMI is an innovative program that brings together five unique Toronto-based pain management services under one umbrella.

Challenge

TAPMI approached PIVOT as a newly formed organization. As they began developing their workflows and programming, they wanted to better understand patient experiences, particularly around the referral and triage processes. They were looking to standardize referrals across all of the organizations to improve their accuracy and increase efficiencies. In addition, as they had no web presence at the time, they wanted to explore how a website could address these challenges and opportunities.

Process

We began our user-centred design process by interviewing chronic pain patients and their family physicians, documenting what we heard into a visualization of their journeys and emotional experiences. We continued our research by reviewing other programs around the world innovating in the treatment and triage of chronic pain, allowing us to identify areas of opportunity for TAPMI. 

Our findings were compiled into a Design Evidence™ document and presentation with the star deliverable being a comprehensive Patient Experience Map; a visualization sequentially outlining TAPMI activities as they coincide with the user journey. Seeing everything mapped out together revealed that during the patients’ longest wait times, TAPMI was doing nothing for them. The Experience Map and the invaluable insights illustrated within it would go on to contextualize program development and strategy for the next 5 years.

Solution

A final major deliverable for the project was the design and development of TAPMI’s website. Armed with insights from our Discovery work and the Experience Map, we were able to target the content and design to serve TAPMI, their partner organizations, and their users — including both patients and community healthcare providers. The website successfully provides TAPMI with a platform that has centralized the referral process for all 5 pain services and provides information for both patients and primary care providers about how to access the TAPMI program, chronic pain education, self-management, treatment options, and more.

As the program rolled out in phases over the following months, Pivot continued to apply our design expertise to inform the implementation of new, more advanced features such as digitized self-assessments, customized clinical patient pathways, and patient education modules. 

LINKS

Visit the TAPMI website to find out more:

“

I’ve started using the diagram to contextualize all the work the new team is currently doing — the programs we are developing fit in one or more of the “sections” along the patient journey, and it will help identify future areas for program growth.”

Administrative Director, TAPMI

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