Unified Patient Portal

Overview

Role: Lead UX Researcher (with cross-functional product & design team)
Company: Natera
Timeline: Discovery to post-launch monitoring (2023-2024)
Goal: Create Natera’s first patient-facing genetic testing portal to empower patients to track tests, access results, manage billing, and schedule sample draws—while meeting 21st Century Cures Act requirements for immediate release of results.

Team

Our product team was comprised of:

  • Product Managers (one per BU)

  • Product Designer whom I collaborated with daily

  • Developers located primarily in Serbia

Context & Challenge

Before UPP, Natera’s genetic testing journey was almost entirely physician-mediated.

Patients had little visibility into their own test status, faced opaque billing, and often waited days to hear results.

  • Regulatory trigger: Cures Act mandated instant patient access to results.

  • Business need: Reduce call-center load and enable self-service while safeguarding comprehension and emotional well-being.

  • User experience research question: How might we give patients transparent, empowering access without overwhelming them with medical jargon or anxiety?

Research, synthesis and strategy

Discovery

  • Stakeholder Interviews: 15 Natera SMEs (product, lab ops, genetic counseling, etc.) to capture technical constraints and patient pain points.

  • Workshops & Empathy Mapping: surfaced emotional states and workflow gaps.

Key Insights → Design Principles

The team synthesized research into four guiding principles:

  1. Patients ≠ Providers – Use plain language and show emotional sensitivity; avoid medical jargon.

  2. Test is Core Object – Prioritize test status and next required action above all else.

  3. Separation of Concerns – Keep billing information distinct from medical results to reduce anxiety.

  4. Do Not Burden – Minimize cognitive load by showing only essential status indicators.

These principles anchored every design and content decision

 
 

Personas & Journey Mapping

Defined Lexi, a digitally engaged pregnant patient, as the primary persona and mapped her end-to-end genetic-testing journey to expose key moments across ordering, sampling, results delivery, and billing.

Design Collaboration

  • Double Diamond Process: Divergent discovery → convergent synthesis → iterative prototyping.

  • Figma Prototypes: Progressive “test card” UI evolved across three major iterations to prioritize results over billing and highlight clear calls-to-action.

  • Critical Scenarios:

    • Scheduling a sample draw (clinic or at-home).

    • Viewing results with optional educational videos and genetic-counselor follow-up.

Usability Testing

  • Method: Remote think-aloud sessions with 6 patients.

  • Tasks: Schedule sample draw; view results.

  • Findings:

    • Flexibility: Patients valued choice of appointment times and at-home draws.

    • Education: Pre-results videos eased anxiety and improved comprehension.

    • Access: Persistent availability of results and resources built trust.

    • Pain points: unclear requirement to select three time slots; ambiguous confirmation messages.

Recommendations included clarifying scheduling instructions and reinforcing confirmation feedback

Impact & Metrics (6-month post-launch)

  • Adoption: 181k patients created accounts (171k Women’s Health, 10k Organ Health).

  • Results Viewing: 90%+ of Organ Health and 100% of Women’s Health patients returned to view results.

  • Scheduling: 13% of Organ Health and 0.5% of Women’s Health patients used in-portal scheduling (reflecting existing clinic-based draws).

  • Engagement Themes: High return visits, strong satisfaction with educational resources, and reduced call-center burden (qualitative feedback from internal teams).

Reflection & Next Steps

The Unified Patient Portal demonstrated that patient empowerment is achievable without overwhelming users, provided design principles stay patient-centric. Next iterations will:

  • Expand to oncology patients.

  • Address low scheduling adoption with improved guidance.

  • Continue longitudinal analytics to refine engagement strategies.

Publication Outcome

This work culminated in a peer-reviewed paper presented at the Design Research Society 2024 Conference:

Navarro-Sainz, A., Huda, S., & Bectarte, R. Unified Patient Portal: Engaging Patients Throughout the Genetic Testing Journey. Proceedings of DRS 2024. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2024.XXX