Helping Highmark move towards “digital-first”
Even pre-pandemic, members were eager for digital healthcare.
Highmark member experience and communication tools were typically developed as individual projects—delivered in a blend of IT managed scopes and outsourced projects. Scopes often did not consider tool interoperability. Once live, project teams shifted to the next assignment. As new point solutions emerged to address the most immediate needs, other technologies aged. For the member this led to significant confusion and frustration as they tried to navigate a sea of disjointed experiences.
As part of the “Simplicity Initiative” led by Cindy Donohoe, Highmark Health CMO, we proposed a new model for developing and managing member tools. Consistent with the best-in-class consumer models, Atlas Labs was established as a continuously improving digital member experience platform and laboratory to help Highmark Health deliver remarkable customer experiences.
We were the first team at Highmark to embrace cloud infrastructure (specifically Google Cloud and Adobe Experience Manager) to deliver consumer tools. Atlas Labs proved it was possible to shift towards a consumer-centered technology mindset, embrace cloud infrastructure, and deliver on the promise of componentized omni-channel experiences in healthcare. It eventually integrated into the Living Health initiative.
We launched an integrated agile design and development team within the Enterprise. It was established to quickly produce and iterate capabilities through feedback, metrics, and outcomes.
Our Digital Experience Owners reached out into the business (including product, customer service, and finance) to understand goals/issues, audiences, and value of requested features.
Through a design thinking approach, they engaged with these business functions as consultants to offer solution options that met the needs of the business while aligning to consumer needs. As Product Managers, they co-defined measurement metrics and guided prioritized solutions through our experience platform backlog.
Three sections of the member journey
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Member Awareness Experiences
The Highmark websites had aged. While originally conceived to be, they were no longer mobile first or mobile friendly because the standards for web development had moved passed the existing infrastructure. Content was hard to update leading to significant internal costs and customer abrasion.
As the “digital front door” for the health care customer, the health plan and health system websites needed to be rebuilt. The Atlas team was responsible for designing and relaunching Highmark’s two primary public facing websites—Highmark and AHN—on Adobe Experience Manager (AEM).
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Multichannel Digital Member Experience
The Highmark member portal was also 10-15 years old. Having been originally built as a scope of work by a consulting organization, the portal was in maintenance mode within HMHS—the IT organization of Highmark.
In order to efficiently modernize, the Atlas team engaged in a agile design and development approach to rebuilding this experience as a multi-channel application capable of providing members the same content and experience on the web, mobile app, or the companies first automated chatbot.
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N of 1 Patient Engagement Pilot
Atlas partnered with the Clinical Transformation Office (CTO) to build a “digital Rx” proof of concept leveraging iOS. This was an initial step in understanding how to build a scalable, flexible care at home platform. Using a native mobile app and IoT devices the objective was learning how to safely engage patients in their care with self-service and concierge supported technology.
The MVP focused on demonstrating the business value of a scalable platform by highlighting the advantages of creating two-way protocols between nurses and congestive heart failure (CHF) patients.
