Children’s Wisconsin App Makes Access to Care Easier for Families

// By Jane Weber Brubaker //

When a third of your families are MyChart power-users, you’d rock their world if you changed everything they’re familiar with. Instead, the Children’s Wisconsin branded app adds new features that parents want, built around the MyChart core.

If you have a sick kid, you need a quick, easy way to get answers to your questions about what to do. Should you go to the ER? Or is a virtual visit appropriate? Is urgent care the best option, or an office visit with your pediatrician?

Children’s Wisconsin wanted to give families a tool that would meet their needs for information and guidance and include features that would seamlessly integrate with Epic MyChart, technology the families already knew and used. The resulting app retains familiar MyChart features and adds much more functionality.

“MyChart is part of the experience. It looks and feels primarily like MyChart, but it is well integrated with the rest of the feature set in the application,” says Bryce Cannon, president at Modea. “You don’t have to log in or go somewhere separate to interact with MyChart as part of the experience.”

Christopher Neuharth is executive director of digital health and experience at Children’s Wisconsin. “We tried to minimize the amount of pain to our families from a change perspective,” he says.

Late last year Modea conducted proprietary research to better understand mobile consumers and how they engage with healthcare. The research confirms that the pandemic accelerated mobile health, especially among certain groups.

Here, we share some of the key findings from Modea’s research, and Neuharth explains some of the strategic decisions underpinning the design and development of the Children’s Wisconsin app. The results so far are promising.

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