Transforming a Diagnostics Lab into a Trusted Genomic Resource with GeneDx

Transforming a Diagnostics Lab into a Trusted Genomic Resource

GeneDx

Industry

Healthcare/Medical

Service

Software Strategic Consulting

CHALLENGE

GeneDx sought to create connection and community for caregivers faced with a potential genetic disorder diagnosis.
SOLUTION

Leveraging Design Thinking, our cross-functional team conducted extensive research to create the first B2C HIPAA-compliant app for a leader in genetic and genomic insights, prioritizing caregiver needs for information and emotional support in caring for their loved ones.
PARTNERSHIP

Our work helped GeneDx transform from a diagnostics laboratory into a trusted direct-contact genomic information resource.

CHALLENGE

GeneDx sought to create connection and community for caregivers faced with a potential genetic disorder diagnosis.
SOLUTION

Leveraging Design Thinking, our cross-functional team conducted extensive research to create the first B2C HIPAA-compliant app for a leader in genetic and genomic insights, prioritizing caregiver needs for information and emotional support in caring for their loved ones.
PARTNERSHIP

Our work helped GeneDx transform from a diagnostics laboratory into a trusted direct-contact genomic information resource.

Sitting at the intersection of diagnostics and data science, GeneDx wanted to provide personalized experiences for parents facing a potential genetic disorder diagnosis for their soon-to-be-born or newborn child. The world leader in genomic expertise believed by leverage its expertise to create a community for caregivers and their families, it could streamline and improve the flow of timely and meaningful information.

Services Provided

Design Thinking
Information & Application Architecture
Infrastructure Engineering
Solution Architecture
UI Design & Engineering
UX Design & Research
Web Accessibility

OBJECTIVE

Rooted in research, driven by design

Our 8th Light team conducted more than three months of research with caregivers — parents of children with rare disorders — that helped guide the iterative software design and development prototyping process. We explored and tested a variety of different experiences along the caregiver journey, intentionally designing moments to guide and support them, whether that be delivering information that might answer their questions or simply indicating the current status of their pending test results and helping them anticipate what comes next.

“

I really enjoyed working with the entire 8th Light team. I have learned so much and organizationally we're in a much better place than when we started. Thank you for your partnership.

”

Joan Mikardos
Business Lead, Pediatrics / NICU/Rare
GeneDx

Gaining actionable insights

The caregiver journey is emotionally and logistically fluid — fraught with anxiety and continually seeking informational and social resources in search of answers. Therefore, it is crucial to create experiences that are flexible and can adapt to their needs, while also providing much needed structure and stability. The project resulted in numerous design insights from research in order to inspire and guide solutions. Each insight attempts to convey a tension the caregiver is having to manage and serves as inspiration for opportunities for design.

The design and prototyping process explored a variety of content types, information flows, and behaviors based on direct learning from caregivers.

For example:

Waiting For Results
When anxiously awaiting genetic test results, caregivers are already overwhelmed before the inevitable influx of information. Caregivers want to be able to focus on actions to care for their child that are within their control.

Receiving Results
Caregivers clearly want to see results right away that best prepare themselves to help their child as quickly as possible, but even if they receive those results quickly, the results may not ease their anxiety.

Collecting & Sharing
Caregivers want to track and maintain their information in one place, but the variety of formats, lack of understanding when certain docs are required, and skepticism to share information within digital solutions can be overwhelming and obscure the benefits of doing so.

Results

Digital transformation for the human journey

Beyond the knowledge that these efforts might help people better understand and navigate one of the most difficult journeys anyone can face, 8th Light is honored to have helped GeneDX evolve the way it thinks about and creates software, while enabling its transformation from a pure diagnostics laboratory into a compassionate and trusted direct-contact genomic information resource. This occurred by:

Demonstrating the benefits of empowering designers and developers with autonomy. By having a shared understanding of caregiver needs and aligned objectives, we were able to drive product development using intuition of the entire team.
Through careful consideration and organization of essential design components, we managed to separate out our library to enable code to be leveraged across other GeneDx products, saving months of work for those development teams.
Our cross-functional integrated team including GeneDx technology team members and genetic counselors across national and international time zones ensured our solutions fit within strict design and performance criteria, and be fully owned and maintained by their teams.

By integrating design and Agile practices, the power of rapid iteration and nimble directional change was demonstrated — the kind of responsiveness to continuous learning that puts better products in people’s hands.