Colgate

Improving dental patient adherence

Summary

Aim: Help Colgate gain better product feedback from dental professionals (UK, US, Mexico) by improving dentist and patient communication.

Outcome: A platform that enables dentists to gather feedback, set mini-goals and give advice to acute case patients and maintain a patient and dentist dialogue in the months between dental appointments.

Consultancy: Beyond, London
Role: UX strategy | UX design

Challenge

Dental appointments often occur less than twice a year (for some patients only once a year), leaving long communication gaps between dentist and patient. This makes hygiene adherence/behavioural change extremely hard. Colgate dentists needed to gain feedback from their patients to understand whether a prescription product worked for them or whether they struggled with certain aspects of their new routine – therefore relapsing into old, less efficient hygiene routines. 

 
 

Approach

The project included an in-depth insight gathering phase that required full immersion into patient psychology, latest dental research as well as the insights and quirks of the professional working practise. These insights led me to create a feedback loop system for the following service stages:

Dentist:

  • Preparation

  • Consultation

  • Post-consultation

  • 3 month 'base-touching'

  • 6 months consultation

Patient:

  • Pre-contemplation

  • Contemplation

  • Preparation

  • Action

  • Maintenance

  • Relapse

Key Insights:

  • Patients are most likely to 'relapse' between week 2 and 3 meaning dental hygiene is reduced or completely disregarded 

  • Most patients can not recall medical advice and instructions after their consultation

  • A large number of patients skip their 6 months consultation meaning they only attend a max of 1 consultation annually

  • Patients do not believe that they are able to improve their dental health through better hygiene behaviours later in life  

  • Dentists have little time to follow-up on patients, let alone engage them into the new service meaning that the dental nurses' role needed to be considered for the service

 

The prototype

We prototyped a system that started with a reception room sign up in the practice. After the first consultation the dental nurse or hygienist log the prescribed products into the system. All follow-up communication works via a simple WhatsApp messaging service or via in-app messaging. The patient receives monthly or bi-monthly mini-goals or questions that can be quickly answered, also allowing for questions that the patient may have about a certain routine. The backstage system allows the dentist to pool all data to quickly assess which products have been most successful for his patients as well as link him/her up with other dental professionals to receive insights on other efficient prescriptions.

The prototype was tested with dentists, dental nurses and hygienists in 5 dental practices across London. It was then iterated and tried out with dentists across the US and Mexico via live online user testing.

 
 

Outcome

Colgate Professional Direct launched in 2020. As I was a consultant during the project, with a fixed term contract, my involvement was limited to the initial research, the conceptualisation of the UX strategy and early wireframe design, and the initial stakeholder presentations that enabled the project to progress.