LocumTree is a marketplace for community pharmacy professionals. It allows locums to build profiles and post their availabilities with minimum defined rates, track invoices for previously worked shifts, and keep a diary of future shifts all in an easy to use FREE app.
Situation
The client wanted to develop an application to improve shift management for locum pharmacists and pharmacies.
The platform should allow locums to manage their future and past shifts, generate IR35-compliant invoices, record payments and post availability for new shifts. On the back-end, pharmacies could visualise this availability, send shift offers directly to locums and manage open vacancies.
The challenges included creating an effective registration system, managing shifts, issuing invoices and integrating functionalities for both locums and pharmacies.
Desk Research
In the UK, there are approximately 42,000 practising pharmacists, 30.7% of whom do not work full-time. These professionals, with an average age of 41, are called Locums. They cover holidays and time off for their full-time colleagues and, in British culture, look for vacancies through job websites or their professional networks. This represents around 12,894 pharmacists with the potential to use the LocumTree solution.
The presence of pharmacists is essential to the operation of pharmacies, as they can only operate under the direct supervision of a registered pharmacist. During holidays or absences, pharmacies must be temporarily closed, ensuring that the dispensing of medicines takes place in a controlled and safe manner.
In addition, the number of professionals in the pharmaceutical industry has been growing consistently in England. By 2040, around 19,000 new pharmacists are expected to graduate from universities and enter the British labour market, with average salaries of around 32,000 pounds a year, working an average of 30 hours a week.
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General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC)
Tasks
The main task was to design a user-friendly and efficient interface for the application's users (locums) and a functional administration portal for the pharmacies, ensuring that usability was optimised for both parties.
The aim was to guarantee a fluid and intuitive experience for managing shifts, issuing invoices and communication between pharmacies and locums, taking into account different user profiles with specific needs.
Turning tasks into solutions
Create a registration flow for locums and pharmacies with validation steps.
Develop a shift management tool (creation, editing and visualisation) in the mobile app.
Implement an invoicing and financial reporting system.
Integrate notifications to accept or decline shift offers directly into the app.
My actions
1. Brainstorm with stakeholders: A number of meetings were held with the project managers and some pharmacists and pharmacy managers to understand the main difficulties in managing shifts and invoices. These insights were key to structuring the registration flow and the design of the control panel.
2. Creation of wireframes and prototypes: Based on the research, medium fidelity wireframes were developed for the mobile app and the pharmacy portal. These wireframes were tested with people from the target audience, which allowed for quick adjustments before moving on to high-fidelity prototypes.
3. Design iteration: Continuous implementations were made, such as adding a real-time notification system, managing shifts via an interactive calendar and adding search filters for pharmacies.
4. Usability testing: After implementation, the product underwent usability testing to ensure that all functions (such as creating shifts and issuing invoices) were easy to use and efficient.
User Flow
This is one of the system's three user journeys. Here we see the pharmacist navigating through the application, where he can check his shifts, accept or refuse interviews and also manage his receipts and available dates for work.
Mobile app
Results
The result was the launch of a robust mobile app and web portal that allowed locums to manage their shifts, view their finances and generate invoices directly on the platform. Pharmacies were able to post shifts, manage locums and confirm hires in a quick and organised way.
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Among the main measurable results:
- Increased efficiency: locums reported a significant reduction in the time spent managing their invoices and shifts.
- User satisfaction: Positive feedback has been received from pharmacies, highlighting the ease of finding and hiring locums.
- Scalability: The platform has been designed to allow for the addition of new features and scalability as the user base grows.
