Optum
Optum DTC marketplace
OPTUM-BuILDING A HOLISTIC dTC HEalTH MARKETPLACE
I was hired as the first service designer on the Optum DTC team in 2020.
We were an ambitious and intrapreneurial DTC team within Optum, built on the directive of UHC CEO Andrew Witty. The objective was to innovate beyond Optum’s traditional B2B2C models in order to diversify revenue streams and diversify offerings, expanding from the Rx, Care and PBM businesses.
I scaled the team up to a constellation of 14 designers, researchers, strategists and copywriters.
OVERVIEW
In July 2020 we started designing and building Optum Store.
Our team worked with Leo Burnett to build a series of assets for future campaigns
RESEARCH & STRATEGY
As part of launching the Optum Store and building the DTC Pharmacy MVP, my team conducted a strategic project to unveil foundational insights and build a vision for the Optum Store V1.
The objectives were to:
Build a strong understanding of the target consumer that can inform positioning, opportunity territories and value drivers.
Uncover defining insights across the user journey, including pain points, unmet needs and emerging experience opportunities.
Inform Optum Store business opportunities for future.
Online Pharmacy
By Q3 2021, we had built an off-benefit Pharmacy, separate from Optum Rx. We initially catered to off-benefit customers, to compete with point solutions like Hims and Hers.
Pharmacy flow
E-Commerce
By Q4 2020, we had a working marketplace for HSA & FSA products that could leverage a captive audience within Optum Bank/Financial.
We validated the revenue stream early, and further improved top line revenue by offering free Covid kits fulfilled through Optum Store.
QME (Qualified Medical Expense Tool) and e-commerce purchase flow
VIRTUAL CARE
In addition to the pharmacy, we built an asynchronous care product, a mental health subscription product, and a tele-health product. The latter leveraged APIs from an existing Optum virtual care platform.
On-benefit tele-health
Asynchronous care (visitless medications)
RESULTS
We built a comprehensive on and off benefit marketplace in less than 2 years, with over $200,000,000 in revenue and over 1 000 000 served customers.
We were able to move quickly and pivot to integrate fulfillment of Covid kits.
By summer 2023, we were part of a JV between Optum and Red Ventures - a media company- founded on the hypothesis that we could significantly lower CACs by leveraging the media traffic to significantly improve and optimize top of funnel marketing.
In Fall 2023, I worked on a prototype that was presented to Andrew Witty where we showed the evolution of the Optum Store into Optum Now. This contributed to a significant investment to the business.
UX + DESIGN PROCESS
UX ORGANIZATION
Central to my role at Optum was building and leading an internal team of researchers, content leads and UXers that followed a matrixed organization across multiple scrum teams.
