Discovery Research: Supporting New Parents

Background

The MyChart patient portal strives to be a one-stop-shop for patients and patient caregivers, to help them manage their health and the health of loved ones. Currently, however, patients and proxies use several applications and diverse resources to manage to their healthcare needs.



Problem

We needed to learn how we should support new parents in MyChart to meet all of their healthcare management needs. After a child is born, mothers enter a period of recovery from the trauma of delivery. At the same time, newborns, and then young children, rapidly grow and develop. This is a time of high healthcare engagement. However, the MyChart patient portal did not support the unique needs of new parents. Moreover, we did not fully understand new parents' motivations and concerns, how they interacted with the healthcare system, and how their concerns intersected with those of the providers who looked after them and their children.



Research Approach

Semi-structured Interviews with Parents
In order to understand the driving needs and concerns of new parents, I conducted semi-structured one-on-one interviews with 17 mothers of young children. I asked parents to describe their experiences, to relate what they were most concerned about, what they googled most, what they wish they had known.

Semi-structured Interviews with Physicians
I interviewed 7 pediatricians, 3 obstetricians, and 9 neonatologists. I asked providers what was important for them to track at different stages of a child’s life, and what they thought parents should track.

Focus Group with Parents of Preterm Children
After conducting the first round of interviews, I learned that children who were born prematurely or with medical complexities needed special care first within the neonatal intensive care unit, and then at home. While I understood the medical approach from discussions with neonatologists, I did not understand the parent perspective. I reached out to a leading pediatric organization and organized a focus group with 13 parents to discuss their specific experiences.



Findings

Based on my research findings, I determined key areas of intervention: child nutrition, developmental milestones, and mother's care, particularly postpartum depression. These were areas of concern for both parents and providers and areas where parents needed support.

I scoped three pillars of care for these areas of intervention: education, connection, and tracking. Through my research, I learned that parents want to know about topics such as breastfeeding or common concerns. They currently search google and encounter hundreds of results that they then must sift through to find a reputable resource. Alternatively, many rely primary on conversations with family and friends since it is faster and easier than reaching out to a pediatrician. The MyChart application, I argued, could quickly and easily provide them legitimate information, that they know they can trust, and help them decide if they need care from a provider.

Additionally, parents often need support outside of the Well-Child visit. They may need to meet with lactation consultants, case managers, or therapists. MyChart could make it easier to find and connect with these resources.

Finally, parents are often unsure if their child is getting adequate nutrition or meeting developmental milestones. MyChart could help them be confident in their child’s growth and development or help them understand when they should reach out for support.



Research Artifacts

I created several personas to help guide design and development while keeping the patient at the center. These personas addressed the main concerns that different types of parents - single parent, parent with a preterm child, parent with postpartum depression, married parent - faced as caregivers as well as their own birth and recovery stories.

Additionally, I created job atlases to help stakeholders understand the drivers, current behaviors, pain points, and success criteria for several important jobs carried out by parents: breastfeeding, formula feeding, and ensuring that a child develops appropriately.


Outcomes

Wave 1
From my research, we learned that there were ways to harness already-existing development to support parents. We put in place a project to build records that organizations could use, out-of-the-box.

Example Records

Health check-in tasks for mothers:
Breast Issues and Breastfeeding questionnaire, certain responses trigger appointment scheduling and educational materials tasks
Postpartum Depression, certain responses trigger appointment scheduling and educational materials tasks

Educational tasks:
Breastfeeding and formula feeding topics
Transitioning to food topic
Childhood development topics, based on child age
Postpartum depression topic
Tracking tasks
Patient-entered flowsheets for nutritional intake
Patient-entered flowsheets for output

Wave 2
The second wave of the project required development to support health-tracking needs in a way that was easy to use and effective with a delightful user interface. We added a project to our future roadmap to build a childhood development module that parents could use to track milestones, learn ways to promote milestone gating, and escalate if their child was outside of healthy ranges.