Patient Pass:

COVID-19 Screening mobile app

The Problem:

Johns Hopkins Medicine needed a quick and easy way to pre-screen all patients who had in person appointments, to prevent the spread of COVID-19 and reduce the risk of exposure to patients and visitors.

Solution:

Patient Pass is a mobile web app that was designed and implemented to be used by patients and visitors at any Johns Hopkins outpatient location. Patients and visitors were required to take a screening questionnaire 1 day before their appointments for COVID-19 symptoms.

The story

When pandemic happened back in March 2020, Johns Hopkins hospital had to act quickly to change some of their requirements for outpatient visits. One of the digital solutions was designing and building a mobile app that would send a text message to patients one day prior to their appointment. The text included a link to the patient pass web app. Patients could enter the app by using their credentials. Then they were asked 3-4 screening questions and based on their answers, patient pass would generate their red/green pass.
The patients were asked to show their pass upon their arrival at any Johns Hopkins location.

Our team had only 2 weeks to design and implement the first version of this application.
The main challenge for me ,as the designer of this project, was that I didn’t have much time to dive deep in the research phase. I had to create medium/high fidelity mockups in 24 hours and present it to a group of clinicians at the Johns Hopkins Hospital.

I had to follow the Johns Hopkins branding and didn’t have much freedom to explore different ideas which helped in some cases but created some challenges as well. We had to consider different mobile screens, and design a desktop version just in case patients wanted to take the screening questionnaire on their personal computers.

The Result

The app was built in less than 3 weeks and was used by thousands of users every week for two and a half year. It went through multiple iterations while it was being used by patients at all Johns Hopkins Hospital locations.

The Challenge

This project posed inherent challenges due to its nature. It was urgently demanded by numerous centers at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, necessitating swift action on our part.

Anticipating a substantial user base (potentially numbering in the millions within 2 years), we recognized the need for a comprehensive understanding of our target users. Accordingly, we placed a high priority on incorporating accessibility requirements into the development process, ensuring that the end product would be inclusive and serve patients from various backgrounds, abilities, and constraints.

You can read more about this app here on the TIC’s medium page.