Mayo Clinic
Mayo Clinic's Clinical Trials Beyond Walls initiative leverages telehealth, remote assessments, wearables, and mobile specimen collection to fully decentralize clinical trials.
Mayo Clinic's Clinical Trials Beyond Walls initiative leverages telehealth, remote assessments, wearables, and mobile specimen collection to fully decentralize clinical trials.
As a design lead at Mayo Clinic for the Clinical Trials Beyond Walls, I collaborate with leadership, study teams, and trial participants to design as suite of apps for clinical trial conduct.
Close collaboration with study teams and clinical trial participants to uncover problems in service workflows.
Design of software strategy supporting workflows in clinical trials for participants and study managers.
Design of a digital product suite that integrates smartphones, wearables, and a desktop backend.
I set out to organize the design file to be usable to all members of the team not just for designers.
Leveraged the design file to generate videos showcasing the experience.
Created high fidelity prototypes that anyone could click through.
Laid out the software features as screen flows with branching paths.
Detailed every possible interaction for development and QA.
Designing this end-to-end experience can be summarized as the translation of highly technical clinical trial protocols into digital experiences for uninitiated patients and clinical trial professionals. Logically, the differing user needs required two experiences, but both share the same information systems and visual language.
Clinical Research Coordinators have the difficult task of being at the crux of the converging systems that support a clinical trial. CRCs wear many hats that cover the entire process of managing and executing the research study, encompassing the design, supervision, and implementation of the trial protocol and all in compliance with ethical and regulatory standards. Additionally, they are the primary contact for clinical trial participants.
I, in collaboration with CRCs and stakeholders, designed an experience to streamline workflows for clinical trials conduct.
The CRC must access multiple systems and relay data between them to ensure synchronicity while managing clinical trial participants.
The CRC manages inputs and outputs through one front-end, reducing burden and focusing their work on supporting the clinical trial participant.
Problem: there exists a plethora of wearables options for continuous data collection.
Solution: establish a set of desired data points and preferred devices and design a seamless experience for participants and study teams.
Ultimately, it is human beings who use software and in designing such a complex integrated software suite you must receive input from numerous individuals of different backgrounds. Looking past the MVP, I researched with Research Protocol Specialists and Clinical Research Coordinators of varying seniority (while still receiving input from stakeholders).
Through a combination of 1:1 interviews and moderated tests, my research produced the following for improvements beyond the MVP:
Managing external processes were among the most desired workflow improvements as they generated the most risk and frustration for the study team members.
Numerous ideas were produced, further expanding on reporting and additional integration of data points from other systems.
Personas for RPSs and CRCs were improved with details about how they prioritize and distribute work, how they communicate with participants, and various preferences.
© 2013 – 2025 Angel Cortes.
All product names, trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners. All company, product and service names used on this website are for identification purposes only. The use of these names, trademarks and brands does not imply endorsement.