Designing a health insurance portal with members, for members
Doctors' Health Fund partnered with us to create a new website and online member services portal. Together we co-designed and implemented a solution using human-centred design practices to guide the team, and agile development to implement our designs.
Using a serverless JAMstack microservice architecture running on Netlify, Sanity CMS and Amazon Web Services (AWS), we were able to provide a solution that enabled Doctors’ Health Fund to provide a better and more secure user experience for members, that cut down on unnecessary code and reduced attack surfaces.
The outcome saw a significant improvement in security, reliability, speed, and ease of use for Doctors’ Health Fund's customers.
Doctors’ Health Fund is there for our medical community
Doctors' Health Fund is a private health insurer founded in 1977 to serve the medical community in Australia. As a member-owned fund, Doctors’ Health Fund aligns with the values of the medical profession and offers flexible, comprehensive health insurance policies including hospital and extras coverage.
They prioritise their members’ well-being, which is why they reached out to us to see how we could provide them and their user base with a better digital experience.
Prioritising member engagement and security
Doctors’ Health Fund sought to reframe how members engaged and perceived their health fund. Their goal was to shift the user experience from traditional and complex by creating a portal that put members first.
Before partnering with Airteam, Doctors' Health Fund faced several challenges with their traditional server CMS, website, and monolithic online member services platform. The limitations of their setup prevented them from providing the exceptional member experience that they were striving for.
Doctors' Health Fund sought to revamp their digital member experience by adopting a brand new, best-in-class approach that was mobile-first, responsive, and highly secure. Their key objectives were to enhance member engagement, improve security, reliability and speed, and make the platform easy to use.
Ultimately, their goal was to provide a customer-centric digital experience that stood out as a leading example in the private health insurance sector. This is where we came in to help.
A design-centric journey produced a customer-centric digital experience
Designed with members, for members, the Doctors’ Health Fund member portal was meticulously crafted to move away from the usual perception of a cold, transactional experience to one that provides active encouragement for people to put their health first.
We designed the portal to be intuitive, beautiful, accessible and usable - enabling people to stay engaged and in control of their health claims and benefits.
Design frameworks and learnings guided our every decision:
- We conducted stakeholder workshops, user interviews and surveys.
- We went through iterative design rounds, scaling up versions and prototyping.
- We conducted card-sort activities and multiple rounds of research and testing.
- We created personas and went through experience mapping.
- We prioritised content accessibility using WCAG AA standards.
We designed Doctors’ Health Fund member portal using best practices to foster a customer-first approach that stands out as a leading example in the health insurance sector.
From design through to development, the member experience came first
Working in an agile delivery cadence, we migrated the Doctors’ Health Fund website and online member services from a monolithic legacy codebase to a modern serverless/JAMstack architecture. This was to alleviate patching, minimise attack surfaces and provide scalability and speed.
We selected AWS as a reliable, cost-efficient cloud platform which provides a range of key security, availability and reliability services. Our technology stack included React, Python, GraphQL and NodeJS.
“Airteam, through their UX and Agile Development processes, successfully harnessed the knowledge and experience of our people and translated that into an environment where our members have better access to information and services in an intuitive and visually appealing portal. We have been impressed both by Airteam’s professionalism and their willingness and ability to take complex problems and create innovative solutions.”
– Andy Phillips, Chief Operating Officer, Doctors Health Fund
Leading the way in the private health insurance space
The new website and digital member services portal have improved security, reliability, speed, and the member’s user experience.
Doctors’ Health Fund’s portal now provides unambiguous and intuitive functionality. The portal has reframed the relationship between Doctors’ Health Fund and its members, resolved frustrations, simplified claims processes, and made healthcare more accessible.
A member-first design approach has paid dividends, as reported in member surveys, app reviews, internal stakeholder feedback, and app data:
- Fewer user complaints and less call centre demand.
- Uplift in member satisfaction and increased positive user sentiment.
- Increased customer retention and greater new member adoption.
- Reduced internal administrative tasks and greater user control.
- Decreased task completion time for users.
Doctors’ Health Fund has shifted the traditional, transactional relationship between health fund and members to one that puts members first. They have moved away from the stereotype of insurance being complicated and self-interested, by making their member portal a go-to source of truth to interact and build trust with the fund.
Recognised as an award winning design
Our work with Doctors' Health Fund has been selected as a Good Design Australia Awards winner. The Good Design Awards are internationally renowned for celebrating excellence in design and innovation, and it's an absolute privilege to be recognised among the best in the industry.
“Designed to care for those who care for us, this health portal offers doctors seamless navigation and will ultimately empower them to enhance their work. The Jury loved every bit of this project and sees the potential it will have on healthcare professionals and the important work they do. Well done.” - Good Design Awards Jury
Continued partnership with Doctors’ Health Fund
Airteam’s mission is to create software products that bring about positive change and empower our customers. We do this by partnering with progressive values-aligned businesses in Australia. This is why we’re proud to not only deliver Doctors’ Health Fund with an industry-leading online member services portal but to have formed a long-lasting partnership that continues to deliver results to them and their members.
“Culture, being so important to us as an organisation, was a big decision point when we selected Airteam and was a strong basis for which we selected them. They genuinely care about their people and their success, which translates into why we believe our partnership with Airteam will be sustained well into the future.”
– Andy Phillips, Chief Operating Officer, Doctors Health Fund
If you work in the private health insurance industry and want to learn more about the digital member services portal we created, or would like to learn more about our design and development services, please reach out. You can book a call with our team today via our online form here.
