Health IT

To improve its health and benefits solution, Accolade is keeping UX top of mind

The company, which tackles employee healthcare benefits, is working to improve the user experience by bringing capabilities like a mobile app to the table.

Pennsylvania-based Accolade is looking to make a difference in how employers handle employee healthcare benefits. The company offers a personalized health and benefits solution that leverages technology to assist employees and their families.

The organization, whose clients include Lowe’s, Allegiant Air and AmeriGas, raised $50 million earlier this year.

“We work with employees to improve how they’re utilizing healthcare by helping them answer questions and get connected to the right benefits,” Christine Van Egeren, Accolade’s senior manager of user experience, explained in a phone interview.

Individuals are paired up with a health assistant, who can answer their questions about benefits, claims and more.

As Van Egeren pointed out, Accolade is working to improve how users interact with its product. Last year, she noted, the company introduced its mobile app, which enables individuals to get in touch with their health assistant in a way other than via phone. If a member doesn’t have time to call, he or she can use the app to message their health assistant. The individual can also take a picture of a claim, send it through the app and the assistant can answer any queries.

This year, the company’s goal is to add more self-service capabilities to its solution, Van Egeren said.

Accolade’s usability team is split into two groups, she added. One half is focused on health assistants’ user experience, and the other half works on the experience from the perspective of a member (an employee of a client like Allegiant).

“Both sets of designers … really go deep on understanding the users that they’re designing for,” Van Egeren said.

By pursuing usability studies, the designers are able to understand the unique needs of health assistants and members.

Because Accolade assists a variety of consumers, the designers also strive to dive deeper into what each individual member needs. In other words, the company wants to make a solution that’s accessible to all kinds of employees, regardless of age or whether they have a disability. A millennial doesn’t interact with a tool in the same way a retiree does, just as someone who’s colorblind doesn’t use a solution like someone who’s not colorblind.

The goal, Van Egeren noted, is making sure everyone can use the Accolade tools.

“When [people] come to us, they’re in a very high-stress situation already,” she said.

The aim is to put them at ease and avoid confusion while using the solution. Thus, Accolade seeks to make the user experience as low-stress and simplistic as possible.

Photo: triloks, Getty Images

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