Background (Company - Kroger Pharmacy)
From previous research, we learned that there are opportunities in the end to end vaccine process that can help optimize the associate’s workflow in order to reduce their manual workload.
Goal
Optimize vaccine delivery by simplifying workflows, improving monitoring and documentation, and empowering technicians to handle administration duties—allowing pharmacists to concentrate on advanced clinical responsibilities.
Problem Statement
The current vaccine administration workflow involves redundant entry of vaccine information at both the beginning and end of the process. This duplication leads to inefficiencies, increased risk of data entry errors, and staff frustration.
Additionally, printing consent forms slows down workflow and uses unnecessary space.
Additionally, printing consent forms slows down workflow and uses unnecessary space.
Solution
Digitized the end to end vaccine flow: A new administration screen enables pharmacists and technicians to efficiently record vaccine details electronically, whether by scanning or manual entry, ensuring safer, faster, and more organized vaccine delivery.
Impact
Decreased vaccine administration time by 44 sec
Increased vaccinating technicians by 41%
Increased digital scheduling by 30%
Increased vaccinating technicians by 41%
Increased digital scheduling by 30%
My Role - Lead Product Designer
My responsibilities included:
- Facilitation of discovery sessions
- Strategize and build roadmap for MVP
- Weekly business & compliance calls to ensure alignment
- Worked on designs high level and delegated design execution to junior designer
- Facilitation of discovery sessions
- Strategize and build roadmap for MVP
- Weekly business & compliance calls to ensure alignment
- Worked on designs high level and delegated design execution to junior designer
- Conduct in person research at pharmacies to understand current experience and test new experiences
- Weekly meeting with product manager and designer to prepare for discoveries/refinement
- Collaboration with engineering to ensure design requirements were met during refinement and QA
Teams Collaboration- Weekly meeting with product manager and designer to prepare for discoveries/refinement
- Collaboration with engineering to ensure design requirements were met during refinement and QA
Product Management, Engineering, Compliance, Operations, Business, Research, Design
Current and New Solutions
- Prints form for the patient
- Process form in the pharmacy system
- This process involves going through different steps: processing the data from the form to insurance to pre-verification.
- Prepare vaccine once patient arrives and manually enter vaccine information on the paper consent form and the pharmacy system
- Optimized the vaccine processing workflow and reduce the data inputted
- Digitized experience where a paper consent form is not required anymore
- Scanning vaccines for verification directly into the pharmacy system
Timeline
High Level Workflow
Discovery - Understanding the WHY and value statement
- Visited pharmacies to learn about the current vaccine process
- Map current process, identity pain points and opportunities and connect to the value & business outcome
- Map future ideal process
- Map current process, identity pain points and opportunities and connect to the value & business outcome
- Map future ideal process
Current experience designs (purple highlights opportunity areas)
- Patient schedules vaccine on the Kroger website and receives email confirmation.
Image below: These are the steps to process a vaccine in the pharmacy system
- Patient arrives for the appointment at the pharmacy
Image below: Technician processes payment for vaccine
- Pharmacist or technician will prepare the vaccine and call in the patient for the vaccine administration
Key takeaways from current vaccine experience:
- redundant steps while processing the vaccine and post processing
- involves printing the vaccine consent form
- process takes too long overall
Create designs & test in stores with pharmacists & technicians
Takeaway from testing:
- Simplified data entry process to avoid workaround and errors.
- Allowing pharmacists to review consent form early in the process vs later was helpful as it gives them time back and makes the vaccine administration process faster.
- Inputting vaccine information digitally increases patient safety and reduces the manual steps to post process vaccine information into the pharmacy system
Prioritize Items: Importance vs Difficulty Matrix
Used an Importance vs. Difficulty matrix to guide MVP and long-term roadmap decisions, balancing user needs, technical feasibility, and regulatory constraints. Led cross-functional alignment across product, engineering, business, and compliance, driving informed tradeoffs that clarified scope and anchored design decisions to measurable business impact.
Final MVP Solution
Update Vaccine Processing
Simplify data entry and reducing the redundant information entered
Adding a Pre-Verification Step
Allow pharmacists to review digital consent form before vaccine administration
New Vaccine Administration Queue
Allow technicians and pharmacists to view and manage upcoming vaccine administration
New Vaccine Administration Screen
Allow technicians and pharmacists to electronically (scan or enter manually) input vaccine information
Detailed screens of the new experience for vaccines (Green highlights the updated/new solutions within the system)
- Patient schedules vaccine on the Kroger website and receives email confirmation.
Image below: These are the steps to process a vaccine in the pharmacy system
- Patient arrives for the appointment at the pharmacy
Image below: Technician processes payment for vaccine
- Pharmacist or technician will prepare the vaccine and call in the patient for the vaccine administration
Feedback
Impact
Insights & Next Steps
Since launching nationwide, the digitized workflow significantly improved patient safety by minimizing manual steps and increasing accuracy in vaccine administration. The efficiency gains also freed up pharmacists’ and technicians’ time, enabling them to better support patient care and other essential pharmacy tasks.
Next, we aim to strengthen integration between the vaccine registry and pharmacy systems to surface accurate patient data in real time—empowering pharmacists to provide better, faster vaccine counseling.