Since 2012, Abarca and Triple-S have worked together to create new ways to increase medication adherence and improve the experience for members. Recently, however, the partnership undertook an entirely different approach toward improving access to quality healthcare — Innovation Design Thinking.
This new initiative from Abarca helps clients create consumer-focused solutions that improve health outcomes and addresses healthcare’s biggest challenges. Here’s how our HealthTech approach works:
- An unconventional path. Creativity and exploration are at the heart of Innovation Design Thinking. This challenges us to rise above conventional solutions and focus on all the users who will interact with our products. Forget about business viability or technical feasibility; user desirability is what matters the most. In this case, that meant patients and caregivers.
- A well-defined plan. Innovation Design Thinking is rooted in a collaborative five-phase action plan that ensures we have examined every angle of a problem — and challenges us to go out of the box to find the best solution for the issue at hand.
- A consumer point of view. Too often in healthcare, organizations can lose sight of the end-user. However, we know that for our final product to succeed, it has to be designed to achieve a consumer need or job-to-be-done — rather than in pursuit of internal KPIs or business objectives.
- A collaborative partnership. Innovation Design Thinking requires that all stakeholders are invested not only in the end-result but in the process itself. And Triple-S was engaged every step of the way to ensure that we created a solution that would best suit the needs of the people they serve.
Using Innovation Design Thinking, we created Triple-S en Casa — Puerto Rico’s first-ever home delivery pharmacy program. This service is powered by an intuitive and user-friendly app that gives members across the island the ability to manage and order their prescriptions from the comfort of their home – improving medication access and empowering patients to take control of their health.
Once the product was finalized, we began gearing up for a Spring 2020 rollout. We also joined forces with Alivia Home Delivery — a community-based pharmacy chain — to ensure that members would be able to receive their medications seamlessly.
And then, COVID-19 began spreading, and Puerto Rico enacted one of the nation’s strictest quarantine protocols — making access to prescription delivery services even more critical. So, we worked with Triple-S to expedite the launch of Triple-S en Casa and opened it up to all Triple-S commercial and Medicare Advantage members.
Users immediately began signing up for Triple-S en Casa–confirming that Innovation Design Thinking is crucial to deliver products and experiences that consumers really need and want in a way that works for them.
And this is just the beginning.
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This blog was written by Christian Caballero, Director, Strategy to Execution at Abarca.