UNC Health announced on tuesday rolling out New features in its app enhance its digital front door.Health System in Chapel Hill, North Carolina Gozio Health Embed new wayfinding technology into its applications, and healthy and healthy Use its patient communication platform.
Both providers have existing relationships with UNC, Dan Dodson, health system innovation director, said in an interview. UNC begins partnership with Gozio roll out Its mobile app was released in 2019. The app was released to make it easier to find road signs while the health system is undergoing construction on its flagship medical campus. UNC is also a long-time user of the WELL messaging platform to facilitate patient communication.
UNC is pleased with both vendors and has identified new ways to integrate their technology into their consumer applications. The first is through smarter links. When a patient receives an appointment reminder text message from UNC, WELL now sends a link to download the health system’s app. Adding these links increased daily downloads by 443%, Dodson said. UNC is the first health system to deploy the WELL Smart Link option, he said.
UNC has also incorporated a feature that allows patients to save their appointments to their phone calendar via an embedded link. When clicked, the link will open UNC’s app and provide Gozio-powered wayfinding from the patient’s home to the parking lot to the office where they will be seen.
The health system is also using Gozio to display a map showing app users’ emergency departments and nearby urgent care locations, as well as urgent care wait times.
“It’s because when you’re at a kid’s soccer game in an area you’re not familiar with and they sprain their ankle, you want to find the nearest emergency care,” Dodson said. “You might see an urgent care center a mile from you, but there’s a 30-minute wait. It shows you an urgent care that’s two miles away, and there’s a five-minute wait.”
Dodson said these additions are part of UNC’s commitment to continuously improve its technology and patient experience. He noted that his team is enhancing a tool that patients already love to use — the app has achieved more than 1.6 million sessions and has a 71 percent repeat usage rate.
For Dodson, strengthening the digital front door is a key way to differentiate the health system.Half of patients feel healthcare providers have a bad digital experience ruined their entire experience with that provider, according to Accenture Report.
When rolling out these new features, ensuring that poor digital experiences don’t undermine patients’ perceptions of UNC is one of the health system’s primary goals. Dodson added that UNC wants its digital front door to be as seamless as possible so patients don’t feel like they need to visit multiple portals to complete various simple tasks, such as confirming appointment times or paying co-pays.
Having an easy-to-use web presence is not only a consumer preference, it’s a feat that many vendors fail to achieve. Dodson laments that the consumer digital experience in healthcare still lags far behind other industries.
“A lot of the time, I’m not looking at what the health system on the street is doing. Instead, I’m looking at trends that are happening in the consumer space,” he said.
Image credit: Zhu Yufang, Getty Images
