How to design intuitive medication data tools and data on the patient portal
Learn best practices for designing usable patient portals that allow users to manage their prescriptions and take charge of their health
Patients need the right tools to take charge of their health and make changes to their prescriptions; we found significant room for improvement in our study of medication data tools, with best practices including:
- List key medication with calls to action to assist patients in prescription management
- Offer tools to encourage medication adherence
- Integrate prescription insurance coverage into cost estimators
- Provide as many prescription management resources and tools as health insurers do
This Health System Monitor Briefing examines medication and prescription resources offered by 15 organizations on their mobile apps. In a sign of the importance of this topic, Corporate Insight’s recent Digital Health Survey found that 81% of mobile app users logged into their patient app in the last six months.
When assessing medication data tool functionalities, we note specific capabilities offered by each organization and provide a detailed matrix. We highlight attributes related to findability, available medication details, and capabilities that allow users to manage their medications.
Corporate Insight found that few firms offer significant or innovative functionality beyond the expected set of medication information and prescription renewal capabilities. Medication data is robust and well-organized across the coverage set and pharmacy preferences are common, but refill alerts and calls to action are limited.
Organizations should aim to provide robust resources that emulate those of insurer sites and mobile apps to provide a better experience and more actionable guidance for patients. Ideally, organizations will provide comprehensive medication details to assist in the prescription management process. We found room for improvement in this area, because while all firms provide the medication name and dosage, only 66% include the date prescribed and the prescriber.
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