This week it’s time for Doc Ready to come under the Mindtech evaluation spotlight. It might feel like déjà vu reading this because, just like with In Hand, we found a really positive picture of Doc Ready’s use and impact. However, there are some important differences.
This article shows those differences as we discovered through a survey of 56 Doc Ready users.
People Liked Doc Ready… A Lot
Those people who filled in the survey really liked Doc Ready.
- 87% agreed or strongly agreed that it was easy to use
- 82% said it was good enough to recommend to their family and friends
- 80% said it had partly (9%) or completely (71%) met their needs
- 56% would use it again for getting ready for an appointment
- 53% would use it again to prepare a checklist
Overall, the Doc Ready users who filled in the survey gave the app an average of 8.09 out of 10.
Why did people use Doc Ready?
Most (91%) of people wanted to use Doc Ready for exactly the reason it was built for – getting thoughts organised for an appointment and making a checklist (73%). It was the checklist function that people valued the most: the parts for building, viewing and ordering the checklist were those most highly rated by respondents and also most frequently accessed by users.
Most respondents had used Doc Ready to prepare for an appointment with their GP (73%), but it was also being used to prepare for other types of appointment, including counsellors (11%), a family member or friend (11%), psychiatrist (9%), support worker (7%) and school nurse/counsellor (2%).
Before using Doc Ready only around one third of respondents (32%) had written down their thoughts ahead of an appointment. The rest had either thought about what they wanted to say (33%) or done nothing at all to prepare (35%). So for two thirds of the people responding to the survey, using Doc Ready was the first time they had listed and ordered their thoughts before an appointment.
How much does it help mental wellbeing?
From survey respondents we can clearly conclude that Doc Ready does support their mental wellbeing. When we measured their responses across ten dimensions of mental wellbeing, across 9 of those dimensions the majority of people said it had helped. Those aspects of wellbeing that were rated most highly, relate really closely to the purpose of Doc Ready, giving us confidence that it does what its intended to.
When we examined responses more closely an interesting pattern emerged. Those respondents who reported having experienced mental health problems were also those who rated it as more useful than those who hadn’t. This gives us even more confidence in its effectiveness.
What next for Doc Ready?
When the Labs process stage finished Doc Ready had the clearest proposition of all the seven ideas. Folks involved in the Labs went on to form part of the development team awarded funding to develop it. Looking across the five products we evaluated we agree with the Doc Ready team’s belief that this played a huge role in the app’s success. It was the first of the products to launch back in September 2013 and its purpose and intended outcomes remained strong and clear throughout and ever since.
Thankyou
A big thank you to all those who sent in the survey. As with In Hand, it’s been great working with the Doc Ready gang: Denise, Mark, Matt, Ben, Harry and – thanks for all your hard work helping us the evaluation.
