Physical Therapy App

Product Design / UX

The Physical Therapist app concept was conceived after going through PT to recover from a running injury. While a great doctor can provide knowledge and insight to ensure quick and successful recovery, the process felt like it could be improved from both the therapist and patient perspectives.

goals

  • Improve the recovery process by creating a simple tool to measure daily progress and track improvements over time with data insights.
  • Bring clarity to exercises within a regimen with video tutorials.
  • Increase adherence to regimen with push notifications when it’s time for a patient to run through PT regimen.
  • Promote communication between therapist and patient with features that support sharing progress and asking questions in between office visits.

Physical Therapist Flow Chart

The PT app will provide Physical Therapists a way to:

 

  • Access a library of exercises and create a PT regimen
  • Prescribe an exercise regimen
  • Check patients are following regimen
  • Communicate with patients via messaging (text, video, photo)
  • Review patient progress
  • Revise an exercise regimen based on patient progress
  • Complete a recovery phase and send next phase PT exercise plan

Patient Flow Chart

The PT app will provide patients a way to:

 

  • Get push notification reminders when it’s time for PT regimen
  • Access exercise regimen & view exercise instructions, videos and tips
  • Mark each therapy session complete
  • Choose difficulty/pain ratings for each exercise at end of session
  • See overall difficulty/pain rating for individual sessions and over time
  • See individual exercise difficulty/pain rating over time
  • Communicate with Physical Therapist via messaging (text, video, photo)
  • Receive messages and alerts from Physical Therapist

Patient Experience

 Patient Dashboard / Record a Session

goals

  • Help patients stick to a consistent regimen with push notifications and easy session tracking, logging and history tool
  • Encourage adherence to regimen with Session Completion score.
  • Bring visibility to progress over time with data from self-assessments taken during the exercise regimen sessions rating pain, mobility and effort.
  • How-to videos and step by step content take the guesswork out of how to properly perform exercises.
  • A timer function, ensures that patients do each exercise for the prescribed duration, before advancing to the next exercise in the set. 
  • If patients choose to skip an exercise because it is too difficult or painful, therapists can help to adapt the regimen to work better for the patient’s abilities and progress.
  • Rating the three key components to recovery: pain, mobility and effort during the session gives a clearer picture of patient feedback since it is collected in the moment when the experience is fresh.
  • Collecting ratings for individual exercises as well as the overall session will aid in tracking progress improving specific motions as well as overall improvement over time.
  • A feature to add personal notes helps patients add reminders to their session that can call out why they may have had optimal or poor performance that day.
  • The ability to message the therapist at the end of each session is a way to improve communication between the therapist and the patient in between visits. This also encourages the patient to provide meaningful, fresh feedback and input to the therapist at a point when the experience is clear.

    Patient Experience

     Patient Dashboard / Progress Insight

    goals

    • Filter progress data to gain greater insight
    • Focus on a shorter segment of time within the treatment regimen for a focus on periods of improvement or setbacks
    • View overall data from all exercises combined, or filter by specific exercises to focus on progress within a specific muscle group or movement.