World Health Organization · Global health · 2021
Help for the hardest conversations in a consultation.
WHO LENA is a mobile application for the World Health Organization that helps doctors talk with patients about sensitive topics, from COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy to addiction. We designed and built it in partnership with Hungry Bytes, together with a family doctor, and shipped it to the App Store in June 2021. It runs on iPhone, iPad and Mac.
By Mircea Muraru · · Updated
Context
Short consultations, hard conversations.
A consultation is short, and the conversations that matter most in it are often the hardest: a patient unsure about a vaccine, a smoker who is not ready to quit, a parent worried about a child's behavior.
The World Health Organization wanted medical workers to have practical, verified help for these moments, on their phone, during the consultation itself. The guidance had to rest on proven communication techniques such as motivational interviewing, and every resource shared with a patient had to come from a verified source.
Challenge
Guidance a doctor can use in seconds.
Clinical guidance in an app easily becomes a wall of text that nobody opens in the middle of a consultation. Each topic had to become a short, structured conversation: where the patient stands, what to say next, what to share with them.
The setting set the rules too: no accounts and no tracking. The App Store privacy label for LENA reads "Data not collected".
What we did
Paper first, with a family doctor in the room.
We sketched each conversational flow on paper, reviewed it with a family doctor, then turned it into an Adobe XD prototype before writing code. Weekly demos with the WHO team kept the content and the interface moving together.
The flows guide the doctor step by step. On vaccination, LENA helps place the patient on a hesitancy scale from accept to refuse, then suggests the next move for each case: open-ended questions, reflecting concerns, affirming, sharing knowledge, agreeing on an action. A "Share to patients" button sends verified links and files.
The joint Murarum and Hungry Bytes team covered product planning and requirements, UX and UI design, the prototype and the mobile build, in React Native.
Outcome
On the App Store since June 2021.
LENA reached the App Store in June 2021, four months after the project started in February. It has kept growing since, with chapters beyond COVID-19 vaccination such as mental health, smoking and alcohol cessation and child health, and releases up to version 5.0.2 in May 2023.
Usage figures are WHO's to publish. We do not quote numbers we have not been cleared to share.
“We’ve worked with Mircea on multiple projects, and the experience has been great every time. Our clients have been consistently happy with the UI/UX, with noticeable improvements in user experience and conversion rates. Mircea combines a great eye for design with a strong understanding of business goals, which is why we continue to turn to him for advice and new projects. I’d definitely recommend working with him!”
The shipped product
The product, up close.
Questions about this project
What is WHO LENA?
A mobile application published by the World Health Organization that gives doctors practical guidance for sensitive conversations with patients, such as vaccine hesitancy or quitting smoking, plus verified resources they can share. It is free on the App Store for iPhone, iPad and Mac.
How did we work on LENA, and with whom?
We delivered LENA in partnership with Hungry Bytes. The joint team covered product planning and requirements, UX and UI design, an Adobe XD prototype and the React Native build, working with a family doctor and with weekly demos for the WHO team.
Are there usage figures for the application?
Not on this page. Usage data belongs to WHO, and we publish only figures a client has cleared. The public facts are the release dates, the platforms and the privacy label on the App Store.
Service
Where this work belongs.
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