Transforming Patient Experience at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital

Situation

Families with a childhood cancer diagnosis often arrive at St. Jude during the most troubling and confusing time of their lives. At this point, technology can act as a problematic barrier or strategic enabler.

Navigating the complex healthcare journey that follows a cancer diagnosis adds needless stress during such a challenging time. WWT and St. Jude Children's Research Hospital developed the "Our St. Jude" app as a way to seamlessly integrate the digital and physical experience of a family's stay on campus. 

"I love the Our St. Jude app. It's so easy to use and I can find everything we need to know and do in one central place," said Travis Molhoff, parent of a St. Jude patient. "The old manual process with the paper printouts was so cumbersome and scheduling changes was troublesome to manage."

Solution

WWT built a patient experience that gives families exactly what they need, when and where they need it — all in a single convenient, delightful mobile app.

• Streamlined communication
• Real-time notifications
• Personalized content
• Campus wayfinding
• Easy access to care team
• Scheduling and calendars

Outcomes and benefits

A digital tool for the digital user: Patient families today expect a digital experience that meets or exceeds the apps they use during their everyday lives. Our emphasis on taking a human-centered approach to design reduced stress and eased the burden of St. Jude families throughout their journey by presenting the most relevant content and resources precisely when and when they are needed most.

A streamlined and approach to the St. Jude mission: The mission of St. Jude Children's Research Hospital is to cure life-threatening childhood illnesses and eradicate catastrophic pediatric diseases. The My St. Jude app digitizes old analog processes across onboarding, registration, communication, scheduling, content delivery and notification, and has effectively spurred tangible digital transformation across the entire patient-family experience and created a more streamlined and efficient business processes.

Flexible and able to meet the need in times of crisis: By enabling push notifications and updates in real-time in cases of emergency or grave concern — regardless of patient or family location — such as during the COVID-19 pandemic, St. Jude is able to communicate with patient families and care teams easily. 

Areas of expertise

Transformation isn't simply a technology decision. Such undertakings demand the right mix of technology, people, capabilities and areas of expertise. 

Here's what the St. Jude solution required:

• Digital strategy
• UX strategy and design
• Application development
• Quality assurance (QA)
• Continuous delivery (CI/CD)
• Strategy and assessments
• Automation and testing
• DevOps
• Data and analytics
• AI and machine learning

How we did it

With over 30 years of experience helping the world's largest companies and government entities, we've learned digital transformation and IT modernization thrive in the space between:  

Our deep domain expertise cuts across business and technology. Our ability to extensively test solutions and deploy them at scale allows us to both advise and execute to create new realities for our customers. Here's how we did it for St. Jude:

We met patients on their own terms

The goal was clear: To help St. Jude better prepare families for what they are going through, reduce stress and create a sense of community. Our extensive research into the daily lives of patients and families allowed us to set a digital strategy based on empathy and compassion. Our agile delivery model put us in lockstep with St. Jude stakeholders all the way to app rollout.  

We paired experience with mission

Patient experience is critical to quality of care, and increasingly that experience is won or lost digitally. It was important for the Our St. Jude app to digitize a number of analog processes and streamline the coordination of logistics across multiple departments while also creating a deeply personalized experience based on that user's stage of care.

We turned paper into pixel

Before the Our St. Jude mobile app, patients and their families were given a printed schedule to navigate their day. Now, families have access to a wealth of information before they even step foot on campus, get critical information when they need it during care, and can stay in touch with their child's care team after treatment.

How can we help you?

WWT's outcome-based approach to agile software development and engineering delivers customer value early and often. We capture iterative feedback to guide decisions and produce impactful solutions at the speed of your business. We can: 

• Solve your toughest challenges by leveraging experts with the experience, discipline and track record of implementing complex custom applications that provide real value. 
• Untangle complex software development efforts to enhance your ability to respond to market changes quickly and take advantage of new technologies. 
• Upskill and transform your development teams by educating them on techniques and processes proven to generate quality, maintainable solutions that last.
• Close skills gaps and complement your organization's own software development initiatives by tapping into our deep pool of talented developers.