Centering Patients and Clinicians in a Complex Government Ecosystem
Summary
Government's digital products and services often impact millions of people. In this session, two team members from Coforma, a digital services firm supporting both commercial and federal government modernization efforts, will discuss how they navigate challenges and foster success in supporting one agency's effort to relieve over-burdened clinicians and improve patient care. At the center of their work is a suite of tools that enable the agency to advance equitable delivery of innovations in cancer treatment. Julie and Laureen will share their strategies for prioritization within a complex ecosystem of business owners, centering patients and clinicians through a strong UX/Product partnership, and leveraging roadmapping and user story mapping to define, focus, and clarify achievable MVP solutions.
Key Insights
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Federal healthcare product teams often face unpredictable legislative shifts that require maintaining multiple roadmap iterations.
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User story mapping helps align diverse clinical stakeholders and clarify priorities in complex healthcare projects.
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Clinicians use outdated documentation methods like pen and paper alongside legacy digital systems.
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Close, continuous collaboration between product managers, UX designers, and researchers is key to success in regulated environments.
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Agile frameworks inherently support adaptability needed in government healthcare product development.
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Direct access to patients is often restricted, so teams rely heavily on clinicians' perspectives to infer patient needs.
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User story maps focus on visible user journeys and usually do not represent backend technical work like database schemas.
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Contractors struggle when not fully informed on decisions due to restricted access to federal-only meetings and data.
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Visual, shared artifacts like user story maps foster internal alignment even if too detailed for external stakeholder presentations.
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Product teams must accept limited control over roadmaps and proactively prepare for inevitable pivots in priorities.
Notable Quotes
"Healthcare IT is a highly regulated industry with a lack of standardization and many legacy systems."
"Prioritizing across a complex ecosystem of business owners requires deep alignment between product and UX or the product never moves forward."
"We often have to rely on Google Newsfeeds to stay informed about legislative changes that impact our roadmap."
"Our users still rely on email, Excel spreadsheets, pen and paper, and even post-it notes for documentation."
"User story mapping helped us put the needs of clinicians front and center in a complicated federal healthcare space."
"We decided not to build a new app but instead integrate within the legacy electronic health record system."
"Working in agile keeps our teams nimble and able to adapt to frequent reevaluations and shifting priorities."
"We don’t get direct access to patients, so we rely on clinicians to represent patient needs to us."
"Sometimes information we need as contractors isn’t shared due to federal restrictions, which makes decision-making challenging."
"We created a change log to document roadmap and user story map updates due to evolving requirements and regulations."
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