ZERO DASH
Accelerating precision medicine for childhood cancer
Serendipity in action: the blossoming moment that aligned our paths🌻
The Children's Cancer Institute found that none of the commercially available platforms were sophisticated enough to handle ZERO's complex cancer genome dataset. After evaluating a few conceptual solutions that fell short of their requirements, they crossed paths with We Discover, a design thinking agency, and serendipitously I had just joined their team at that very moment.
My role
Lead Product Designer 0 → 1 (end-to-end) for ZERO's digital transformation (incl. service design, systems thinking and analysis)
Objective
Reduce the inefficiencies and complexities scientists and clinicians face while manually interpreting and analysing complex genomic data, to scale up enrolment of children with cancer in the program while ensuring faster and safer outcomes
Outcome
The design and delivery of ZeroDash has streamlined the data matching, interpretation, and reporting system, significantly reducing hands-on analysis time by 70% (from 22 hours to 6.5 hours)
↓
70 %
Reduction in hand-on analysis time (from 22 hrs to 6.5 hrs)
↑
50 %
Increased efficient over the first year of monitoring and data collection
↑
700 %
Increase in patient enrolment with only 25% increase in personel
Awards
“To be recognised with an Australian Good Design Award tells the world this project not only represents design excellence, but it also surpasses the criteria for design innovation and design impact”
Dr Brandon Gien / Founder of Good Design Australia, Chair of the Good Design Awards & Executive Director of the Australian Design Council
Discipline
Service design, Systems thinking
Business analysis, UX design, UI design
Team composition
-dsd
Challenge of battling time
Expanding the ZERO program to cover all ~1000 children newly diagnosed with cancer each year presented a daunting challenge
️The initial approach required on average 96 hours of careful manual analysis by scientists and doctors to curate the vast amount of data for each patient, making the process time-consuming and expensive
️Vulnerable to human errors, with much of it relying on excel sheets and manual copying between tools and medical repositories.
To address this, the process needed to be streamlined and made more efficient and reproducible, with reduced turnaround times and costs. By optimising the data interpretation challenge, ZERO can make the benefits of precision medicine accessible to more children, leading to earlier diagnoses and more personalised treatments.
Children’s Cancer Institute is the only independent medical research institute in Australia that is focused exclusively on childhood cancer. In collaboration with The Kids Cancer Centre at Sydney Children’s Hospital, they they perform complex testing and analysis to produce a comprehensive molecular profiling of the child’s tumour, however, the process of interpreting this data, from the lab to patient care, was highly manual and convoluted due to multiple touch-points.
Vision and Strategy: meaningful products are never designed in siloes
Co-design has been the gem to creating flexible and robust strategy grounded in research and data
siloes are like an
echo lost in
the desert
one-off workshops, yield
small gains, but miss vital perspectives and pains
co-design, as ongoing process, fosters inclusion, change and long-term impact
As the Lead Designer, establish strong co-design practices between all parties involved bringing people along the journey, was my mission number one.
👉
Conducted field studies and moderated interviews involving data scientists, curation scientists, clinician scientists, and stakeholders to get broad understanding of process and pain points
👉
Facilitated workshops session to brainstorm solutions, define objectives, frame the platform's vision, and establish goals
👉
Implemented co-design methodologies throughout the project lifecycle, establishing continues feedback loops and co-creation sessions with stakeholders and the team
👉
Actively involved end-users, stakeholders, and cross-functional teams to co-design a solution that authentically addressed user needs, behaviours and mental models
Armed with these insights, we uncovered opportunities for streamlining and enhancing efficiency informing our product roadmap
In our ongoing co-design sessions, we quickly recognised that innovation transcends conventional processes. Tailoring our approach to our team's dynamic nature proved pivotal, enabling us to blend UX and Agile methodologies, adeptly navigating the continuous streams of discovery, design, development, and deployment, embracing a fluid and collaborative journey.
An "aha" takeaway for me was uncovering the effectiveness of seamlessly shifting between a systemic view and delving deep into specific challenges, which sparked my passion for systems thinking and change.
This dynamic approach empowered me to conduct more holistic sessions with the team, facilitating a comprehensive understanding of both the broader landscape and intricate details
Simplifying the complex
Iteratively we designed customised and globally unique solution, centralising cancer genomic data to increase accuracy of findings
🌻
The new system is secure, scalable and centred around enhancing human experience during curation analysis, allowing for the seamless integration of dozens of diverse data sources
🌻
The data curation and interpretation have been streamlined, with reporting efficiency and turnaround times improving by over 50%. The manual efforts are reduced by the implementation of automation and machine learning for recording and flagging data
↓
70 %
Reduction in hand-on analysis time (from 22 hrs to 6.5 hrs)
↑
50 %
Increased efficient over the first year of monitoring and data collection
↑
700 %
Increase in patient enrolment with only 25% increase in personel
Helping interpret and identify
molecular changes that can be
targeted for treatment
recommendation
With the power of co-design and empathy we launched a globally unique solution that met ZERO's design specifications for analysing and visualising cancer genome data 🧬
Some of ZeroDash's key features to start with:
👉 Integrating internal and external sources to systematically evaluate and prioritise mutations, resulting in an improved accuracy
👉 Data visualisation allows quick identification of patterns, outliers and relationships within the data sets
Impact
Reduced hand-on analysis time by 70% (from 22 hrs to 6.5 hrs) by streamlined the data matching,
interpretation, and reporting system
👉 Data curation and interpretation have been significantly streamlined, with reporting efficiency and
👉 ZeroDash enable the ZERO program to increase patient enrolment by eightfold with only 25% increase in personnel
👉 Improved risk profile by minimising human error, due to a higher degree of automation, resulting in more reliable and robust reporting
Fit-for-purpose solution capable of transitioning from research to clinical-grade testing and reporting in the future
👉 ZeroDash's long-term potential extends to addressing healthcare disparities in developing countries allowing to maximise their very limited healthcare personnel to realise the benefits of precision medicine
👉 The platform has significant potential to expand further, perhaps to all 151,000 newly diagnosed adult cancer patients each year in Australia
👉 The solution democratises precision medicine by enabling others to benefit from CCIA & ZERO's comprehensive genomic testing approach.
↓
70 %
Reduction in hand-on analysis time (from 22 hrs to 6.5 hrs)
↑
50 %
Increased reported efficient over 1 year monitoring and data collection
↑
700 %
Increase in patient enrolment with only 25% increase in personel
ZeroDash wins Best in Class for Service Design
at the Good Design Awards in 2023
The Australian Good Design Awards is recognised by the World Design Organisation (WDO) as Australia’s peak international design endorsement programs. It showcase the very best in design and innovation to a worldwide audience since 1958, setting the international standard for good design for more than six decades.
At the 65th anniversary of the awards in 2023, ZeroDash won two of the most respected and recognised design endorsement symbols in the industry for Service Design:
Takeaways
In healthcare every decision has impact
the precision we put into design decisions needed to mirror the precision needed in interpreting genomic data
Personal growth leading a small team
learning to let go of perfectionism at the right times was very humbling, as it helped us move forward. Sometimes we can get bogged into pixel perfection which ultimately can lead to burn out due to overwhelm or distract us from the overarching strategy and business objecting. Co-designing is so immensely important especially when every decision we make impacts real life on a death-life scale
Impact is never designed alone
the project started during the lockdown and at the time I didn’t encounter the concept of co-design. With the challenges complete new way of working imposed, as the lead I was a bit nervous how to ensure the project delivers true impact, so my strategy was to establish more intense collaboration with the stakeholders, including scientist, clinicians and geneticists actively bringing them along the day on.
Facilitation became my second nature and quickly learned that
co-designing is so immensely important especially when every decision we make impacts real life on a death-life scale. Ever since i’ve been an advocate for comprehensive co-design methodologies.
Patrients enrolled
Accelerating precision medicine for children with cancer
with only 25% increase in personel
LEAD PRODUCT DESIGNER 0 → 1
Efficiency increase
50%
… X 8
Innovation increase
Transforming Government innovation with Journey Map Operations
DESIGNATED JOURNEY MAP OPS LEAD
9-12% projected
1,593
Projects
189
Countries
$25M+
Valuation
1,593
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Angga is giving a lot of extra efforts to make sure the project goes well. He even did research to a small village to gathering more necessary customers data.
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