Skip to main content
Back

APOLLO DIAGNOSTICS • 2024 · 2 min read

Patients were abandoning Apollo's prescription flow. In-app scanning cut drop-off by 72%.

Prescription flow, from lost to ordered

Apollo Diagnostics

As a product designer at Apollo Diagnostics in 2024, I faced one problem: about 10,000 patients a month left the prescription flow without ordering. In three weeks, with Shivam Pal and Parul Patnaik, I designed in-app scanning that reads the prescription and offers in-stock alternatives. Drop-off fell 72%, and revenue rose 12%.

OVERVIEW

72%

Less drop-off

From 10,000 to 2,800 monthly users leaving the prescription flow.

+12%

Revenue

10K → 2.8K

Monthly drop-offs

3 weeks

Timeline

THE SITUATION

Patients arrived with a prescription and left without an order.

  • About 10,000 monthly users dropped out of the prescription flow.
  • The brief named no solution, only that the flow was losing people.

The core challenge:

Find where the flow was losing people, and stop it.

The prescription flow, before
The prescription flow, before

THE USERS

Someone holding a paper prescription.

  • Patients with a prescription
    They know what the doctor wrote. They don't know what the catalogue calls it, or whether it's in stock.

PAIN POINTS

Any one step could end the session.

  • Read it yourself
    A patient had to interpret the paper prescription on their own.
  • Find each medicine
    Then search for every medicine on it in a catalogue.
  • Hope it's in stock
    Then discover, one by one, whether each was available.
  • 10,000 a month leaving
    Roughly 10,000 monthly users dropped out of the prescription flow.

WHY IT HAPPENED

The problem was recognition, not navigation.

  • Clarity recordings: people reached the page, didn't know what to do, and left.
  • Patient conversations: many couldn't read their own prescription, so the chemist was easier.
  • Reading it, finding each medicine, checking stock: any step could end the session.
Where the 10,000 dropped out
Where the 10,000 dropped out

DESIGN GOALS

Design goals

  • No translating
  • Always something to order

SOLUTION

An in-app scanning step

  • Scan the prescription
    The app reads the prescription instead of the patient.
  • The medicine, or an alternative
    It surfaces the prescribed medicine, or an in-stock alternative.
Scan → medicine or alternative → order
Scan → medicine or alternative → order

PROCESS

From discovery to handoff

  1. 01 · PRODUCT

    Final screens · Illustration

    Final screens · Illustration
    Final screens · Illustration

  2. 02 · PROTOTYPE

    Scan-to-order, in motion

    Scan-to-order, in motion
    Scan-to-order, in motion

DECISIONS & TRADE-OFFS

Key decisions and trade-offs

  • Recognition, not navigation
    Each of the three steps could end the session, and none was a navigation problem. So the fix wasn't a better catalogue or search: it took reading the prescription off the patient entirely.

OUTCOMES

72% fewer people lost

The client's marketing head credited the change directly.

THE TEAM

The team

  • Adesh Singh

    Product Designer

  • Shivam Pal

  • Parul Patnaik

REFLECTION

What it taught me

An open brief is permission to find the real problem. The flow didn't need better navigation; it needed to stop asking patients to do the reading.

SELECTED WORK

Morecasestudies

All work