Leading European Health
Body Improves Digital
Appointment Booking
Experiences for
Hard-to-Reach Patients
Key highlights
Design inclusivity
Research built around the patients most often excluded from digital healthcare, not treated as an afterthought.
Rigor in every recommendation
Findings grounded in structured, moderated sessions with real patients, not desk research or assumptions.
A model for public service delivery
A replicable approach to improving digital access for a service millions of patients rely on.
Summary
The leading European health body commissioned research into how patients experienced five different DOCTOR appointment booking tools, with a particular focus on hard-to-reach groups who don't normally use digital healthcare services. The research team recruited these participants and ran 50 sessions, feeding findings back to the tool providers. The client has since seen the experience improve, with online Doctor bookings rising from the low millions to tens of millions.
Client overview
A national service built on locally developed tools
The client is a leading health body that oversees publicly funded healthcare, including commissioning and improving the digital services patients use to access care. Since COVID, getting a doctor's appointment has been difficult because of busy phone lines and capacity pressures, and many practices have introduced online booking tools to help. Because individual doctor practices have historically built and paid for their own booking tools, user experiences have varied across the country. To address this, the client selected five of these tools to evaluate and improve, while still allowing practices to keep their choice of tool.
Challenges
Inconsistent booking experiences and limited access to digitally excluded patients
Because doctor practices had historically built their own booking tools independently, patients across the country faced inconsistent digital experiences depending on their practice.
The client needed to evaluate five of these tools, but the patients it most needed to hear from were hard-to-reach groups who don't normally access services such as healthcare or banking through digital channels.
These target participants had poor online literacy, making them difficult to recruit and research, even though they had just as much right to access primary care digitally as anyone else.
Without dedicated, accessible user research, there was no way to know whether the five booking tools actually worked for the people most likely to be excluded by them.
Solution
Putting hard-to-reach patients at the center of digital booking improvements
In 2023, the client briefed Zensar to conduct user research evaluating patients' experiences with five doctor appointment booking tools. Foolproof successfully recruited hard-to-reach participants and ran 50 research sessions, evaluating each of the five tools with 10 participants each, critically important work to improve access to a public service. After the research, we gave third-party providers feedback on how to improve their experience relative to competitors.
Targeted participant recruitment
Successfully recruited hard-to-reach participants with poor online literacy who don't normally access services like healthcare or banking digitally.
Structured research program
Ran 50 research sessions, evaluating each of the five booking tools with 10 participants apiece.
Comparative usability evaluation
Assessed patients' real experiences across all five nationally approved doctor booking tools.
Provider feedback
Gave third-party providers feedback on how to improve their tools relative to their competitors.
Solution enablers
Inclusive recruitment approach
Focused specifically on hard-to-reach groups, ensuring the research reflected people digital services often miss.
A choice of five tools
Client's decision to evaluate five tools, rather than mandate one, let practices keep their choice while directing budget toward targeted research and accessibility testing.
Direct provider engagement
Findings were channeled straight back to the third-party tool providers, turning research into concrete improvements.
A 2023 healthcare brief
Commissioned directly by the client as part of its wider effort to improve entry to a public service.
Business outcomes
Digital doctor appointments grow from millions to tens of millions as patient experiences improve
Bookings scaled up: Online doctor appointment bookings rose from the low millions to tens of millions.
Improved user experience: The client has directly noted improvements in patients' booking experiences following the research.
Increased digital inclusion: Hard-to-reach patients with poor online literacy were given a genuine route to shape national digital health services
Increased service quality: Third-party providers used the research findings to improve their tools against their competitors.
