Helix: Helping Patients Navigate a Life-long Care Journey

Aim

The UCSF Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center provides comprehensive, integrated care for individuals and families who carry genes tied to an increased risk of hereditary cancers. Patients find great value in the care provided, but existing clinical workflows can be inefficient and place too much burden on staff and providers outside of direct patient care. For each patient touch point, clinicians manually search and update multiple databases.

We worked with the Cancer Center team to transition them from an outdated platform to one that could evolve as quickly as the practice of genetic medicine and allow them to focus more time on direct patient care. This work took on a collaborative, iterative process and resulted in an updated Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system, and accompanying product roadmap, that can integrate with other tools and grow with the Cancer Center.

Approach

We began this process by listening to providers, staff, and patients. We observed and interviewed staff and providers in the clinic to understand, first hand, what their work looked and felt like, and what opportunities existed for improvement. We held collaborative workshops with staff and providers to visualize how we might enable their services to grow and scale, while sustaining their high value. We met patients in their homes for in-depth interviews to understand what their life and care management looks like outside of the clinic, where the majority of it occurs. We visualized all that we learned, observed, and envisioned on detailed experience maps and an opportunities document. These visuals were used to guide decision-making, design, and development of the CRM.

We then sat down with our partners, Amie Blanco and Pagan Morris, to co-develop a product roadmap. This process enabled them to confirm their priorities for the future of the Center and its resources, and to communicate to their staff how the CRM was putting their communal goals into action.

Solutions

The course of patient care is highly personalized and based on many factors, and patients come to UCSF at different points during their unique journeys. With SOM Tech’s CRM, Helix, clinicians can update and maintain one database with each patient’s history and ongoing care needs. This solution gives every clinician access to the same information during each patient interaction and sets up them up to more easily track and adjust patients’ individual care plans.

The product roadmap we created illustrates ways in which Helix will grow to accommodate the Cancer Center’s changing needs, including adapting an eConsent process for research, a new Pedigree tool to record family history, and improved care planning and education.