parcha
parcha is a health companion application whose sole purpose is to provide post diagnosis support to the patient. It can scan, understand and translate a medical prescription into an easy to follow medication and diet instructions in multiple languages.
Across the Indian subcontinent, there exist a variety of languages, culture and levels of literacy. Every person who has ever visited a doctor for a consultation, has had a different experience. In the end, the patient is left with a piece of paper with some squiggly lines and a lot of confusion.
parcha solves this confusion by conveying the content of the paper-prescription to the user. It deciphers handwritten prescribed instructions and converts them into easy-to-understand UI in the user’s preferred language. This is achieved by leveraging computer vision and machine learning. parcha also analyses multiple ongoing medications in parallel and suggests a safe and healthy diet to avoid harmful side-effects.
Some prescriptions
There is a problem with all these prescriptions and my aim is to find and solve it.
MY ROLE
The whole process of this project i.e Discovery, Ideation and Design is done and completed by me. It was a solo project.
UX APPROACH
USER RESEARCH & INSIGHTS
Qualitative research was done for this project. Multiple one on one semi-structured interviews were conducted with ‘Healthcare providers’ and ‘Patients’ to get deep insights. Also observational study was an essential tool in this research as I had to observe and study user behaviours and what problems they faced.
Primary Insights
- A problem people often faced was related to not able to read and understand prescriptions that they get from the doctors which has medicine names and their schedules.
- They fail to get knowledge about dietary information which can be crucial in illnesses and could also lead to various side effects with medicines if not taken care of.
Secondary Insights
- Only 10% of India's population is of English readers.
- Around 2,50,00,000 patients consult Indian doctors on a daily basis.
Which means according to estimation only 10% of 2,50,00,000 people are English readers which creates the barrier of language.
User Persona & Jounrey Map
Where?
Geographically the research was done and completed in two cities that is ‘Delhi’ and ‘Jaipur’. I went to multiple hospitals, clinics and healthcare centres to gain access to doctors and patients.
When?
The timeline on which I worked was from 18th April 2022 - 4th June 2022 that is around 6 weeks.
Why?
Patients not able to read their medical prescriptions and not able to remember their medicine schedule given by the doctor and no dietary knowledge in illness.
Parts of a Prescription
How pharmacists explain medicine.
SOLUTION
Parcha was developed out of real life situation when I recently visited to a doctor's clinic for a viral checkup. The name of the medicines he wrote in the prescription was totally un-readable, and also after I came home I usually forget about the medication schedule the doctor mentioned and wrote on the prescription.
Working of the app
The Prescriptions
The prescriptions provided by parcha after the scan are displayed in an easily understandable format and in the language the user selected initially. Here are few examples shown:
PROTOTYPE
Link - Click here for Prototype
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