The following project is a finance module that is part of a tool called Clinical Trial Management System (CTMS). CTMS is used to manage all phases: the study design, study startup, conducting the study (protocols, procedures, patient scheduling, monitoring, etc), and study closeout.
There are two groups of audiences, the first is Research Finance Coordinators or Research Directors at a Practice that use this finance tool to submit reimbursements on behalf of patients for procedures, travel, and equipment that are non-standard of care during a clinical trial. Once the reimbursement is approved, the sponsor will pay the practice back. The second; is a group called US Oncology Research (USOR or part of US Oncology Network). They are the liaison between a Practice and a Sponsor and are the ones approving the reimbursements.
Sites need a way to effectively provide the proper information when first submitting RRFs for approval. Monitoring and tracking submission is highly desired to effectively manage open invoices.
USOR needs a way to easily review and approve invoices in CTMS (ImageNow will be retired) within the deadline timeframe so that Sponsors can pay back Sites for clinical trial test work in a timely manner.
With time being limited, the Discovery phase was conducted within 1 month. First, we needed to have a baseline understanding of the current tool, create the current site mapping, and write the design brief + research proposal. Next, we interviewed a few of the core users to ask any questions about the types of pain points they were having and what goals they need to accomplish.
COMMUNICATION
Tracking system for all parties involved on status of invoice. Improved commenting capabilities that allow all parties to track conversations and updates.
AUTOMATION
Auto-population of known information. Timely notifications and alerts, followed by clear next steps. Provide high-level statistics for quick reporting.
USABLE
Improve the overall experience and visual hierarchy. Provide an adaptable experience for all user types (role-based filtering and sorting). Account for accessibility best practices.
RESPONSIVE
Supported by modern browsers. Optimize for desktop and tablet devices/resolutions.
After interviews, a current and future swim lane map was created to illustrate for engineering and product the complexity of “passing the baton” type of workflow for approving reimbursement invoices. This also helped the team understand tools that are used and to identify what can be automated or eliminated.
In order to assist with business requirements, I created user stories that were pulled from our insights and understanding of our users goals. This also helped inform how we can enhance table interactions to help eliminate the need for spreadsheets.
Following our templates, below are examples of Site personas that were collected over several different project interviews. Each persona has insights from at least 5-8 people. RRF has two unique groups that work within the same system. For the USOR Finance Team the roles consist of Research Invoice Specialist, Research Financial Operations Manager, and Site Services. For Sites, the roles consist of Research Finance Coordinators, Clinical Research Coordinators (CRCs), or Research Operations Manager depending on the size of the practice.
Our product and engineering team never worked with designers before so including us in the discovery phase was very new to the team. As we moved onto the Create phase, we needed to be careful and thorough about educating the team on the design process.
Because the submitting and approval process involved many user roles, quick sketches were created to make sure we understood the process. After approval from users, and engineering we were able to move forward with higher-fidelity wireframes.
Working in sync with the Design System team, we created new components that were added to our library. Our system is only a year and a half old so there were still many scenarios that were not taken into account yet.
Submitting Reimbursement
All background details and a few of the reimbursement details would be auto-populated based on the current patient information within CTMS. Sites will add any comments for USOR to review, provide any documents for verification that scrubbed of any PHI, complete each procedure form field then save and submit.
Check Status
At the end of the week, Site or Site Service users will check the status of any invoice submissions that are a month old. Reimbursements have deadlines where the approval has to be within 30-90 days from the procedure date. If an invoice is taking too long, they will need to contact USOR.
Approve or Deny Submission
Each role will have similar views but different queues for approving or denying invoices. Once the user approves, the invoice will “Push Forward” to the next queue.
Some valuable features to be added in future phases are alerts, high-level statistics on total invoice numbers and data that helps with creating reports.
Open Queries
In future phases, a comprehensive queries feature will help alleviate miscommunication, lost emails, and trackable tasks to help USOR and Sites decrease the time it takes for an invoice to be approved.
Multiple prototypes were created to represent each role in the approval journey. Usability testing included 4 Site Finance Coordinators, 2 CTMs, 2 Finance, and 2 Site Service users. Each role had 3 tasks they needed to accomplish. A survey was sent before each session and after to help measure accomplishments.
The design team demonstrated the value of UX design efforts through the following metrics and strategies: Help uncover insights to inform the feature requirements and scope. Validate solutions and overall usability with users before engineering phases, preventing possible rework post-release.
The metrics shown are a comparison between the current ImageNow solution and a prototyped version of the new RRF solution through an interactive prototype. Beta to be released January 2022.
Towards the end of the project (during hand-off), designers were included in the daily stand-ups and 2-week sprint process with the product and engineering team. I found this extremely valuable and wish we joined sooner so the team had more transparency in what we were working on and how long (points) it took to complete each “ticket”.
This is one of the best product and engineering teams I have ever worked with because together we were great communicators, strategic thinkers, and amazing collaborators. It was fun to include engineering in some of the interviews and assist with decision-making. Our “Skinny” MVP was released in late January so we are very excited to learn more and keep improving RRF!
