DetaQuest Summer Internship
Team
Tirdad Kiamanesh
Duration
8 Weeks - Boston
Overview of the project
I did my internship at DentaQuest as a design strategist in summer 2018. DentaQuest as the biggest dental insurance in the US decided to create an innovation center. This center is responsible for integrating internal and external innovations into new and existing business models, products, and services. This team works hand to had with Impact leadership team and business unit leaders to bridge business and mission value with emerging technologies from companies and investments in philanthropy, science, and academia into new solutions to improve oral health nationwide.
Methods & Activities
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Precursor Research
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Trend Hunting
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Interview ( inside of the enterprise )
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Observing Users
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Workshops
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Customer Journey
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Value Web
My responsibilities
I was working on this project individually ( excluded the workshop with Sylver Consultancy), some of my responsibilities were: design research, design strategy, UX design, created the interview protocols and conducted them, service design, facilitating the workshop.
" Dental care is behind of medical care in term of technology." - Palmer Corson - Director of Transformative Health Technology
- Topics:
I was asked to focus on four tasks during my internship in the DentaQuest enterprise.
1. supported Impact Integration Group ( IIG ) on ongoing secondary research.
2. Help Sylver Consultancy as they were creating series of workshops to train innovation champions in the enterprise.
3. Working on a new concept to reduce disparities and improve oral health.
4. Prepare proposals for the innovation pipeline in the enterprise ( protected by NDA ).
Reseach Plan
- Secondary research:
- New technologies, services, and trends in oral health, like teledentistry and virtual dental home model.
- Investigation of the health care plans and their approach to solving disparities and improve health.
- General market research and trend hunting to find most potential segment.
- Analyze competitors and looking for disruptive technologies and business plans.
- Innovation centers in the big corporations, how do they work, strength and weakness of each model.
- Secondary research :
- Interviewed 11 experts in different departments of the enterprise.
- Observed users behavior in the clinic.
- Participated in two monthly meetings.
- Participated in interviews conducted by Silver Consulting.
Institute
Foundation
DentaQuest
Sylver Consultancy
- Reports
Reports for my manager and the leaders of the enterprise:
- The case study of 7 different innovation centers in the big enterprises and how they do innovation. Created a matrix to show SWOP of each center in compare with DentaQuest agenda.
- Prevention plans, disruptive technologies and services and their effect on the future of DentaQuest market.
- Investigated the relationship between enterprise departments and created the current Value Map and suggested changes.
- Research and finding prsentation
- Final Pretension
Nearly 5,000 dental provider shortage areas across the country with around 49 million residents - American Dental Association, 2017
Opportunity Space
This project has three outputs:
1. Dental Care on Demand - a service platform to request hygenist and dentists in or close to your location
2. Group Care - new business model for oral health plan for disfranchised community
3. DentaQuest Innovation Pipeline - protected by NDA
Dental Care on Demand
Is a service platform that:
1. Provides on-demand dental health
2. Service hour and locations are flexible
3. Uses hygienists to filter patients and reduce costs
4. Reduce entering costs for recent grads
5. Increase access and decrease disparities for the low-income families
6. Use blockchain and AI to increase efficiency and access
Group Care
Is a new business model:
1. Community-based solution
2. A rewarding system to encourage behavioral change.
3. Uses hygienists and teledentistry technology to filter patients and reduce costs
4. Increase access and decrease disparities for the low-income families
5. Use blockchain to increase efficiency
" Dentists work 9-5, so I need to take a day off if I want to take care of my children or myself. I get paid hourly so it is hard for me." - Patient, 43
Dental Care on Demand
" If we involve communities in the prevention care models, the impact would be sustainable." - Foundation Employee, 37
Group Care
Communication Assets
- Diagram of the system
To make it clear and to be sure that the managers understand the way that this system works, I developed this diagram.
- Flyers for communities
- What:
It is a flayer for events in the communities. Promoters use it to explain the community members our oral health plan and why it is different from previous options.
- Who:
Low to mid-level income families who live in the suburbs and do not have access to a dentist in their neighborhood. Have low to average education. Mother and caregivers are our primary target. These people may or may not speak English so the flayer should be visual and have different versions with different languages. It should assure them that they can talk with an operator with their mother tongue. The information on the flyer should customize based on the neighborhood and their main socioeconomic problems.
- Goal:
Easy to read and be understandable for community members. It doesn’t need to answer all their questions; just necessary information. It should encourage them to call the numbers and talk with our operators. We provide them operators in different languages so we can overcome the language barriers.
- Communication between departments
- What:
I needed a communication asset that not only explains the idea but also empowers the communication in the meetings that we probably won’t be there. So it should be clear and self-explanatory.
- Who:
For the managers and their staff in the different departments.
- Goal:
The concept is not totally new to the company, but I am not sure that everybody was on the same page. This asset helped me to give them a better understanding of all pieces of this concept and avoid interpretation and misunderstanding.
Also, it should make an open discussion about the role of different departments in the enterprise to make this idea feasible, viable and desirable.
At the end of the meeting, they had a clear idea about their role and what we needed from them to make this idea real.
On the other hand, I asked them to give me feedback to understand their constraints. In this way, I could predict them and planned for them.
