VPAG Reference Price Portal - MVP
My role:
Lead UX Designer
The VPAG 2024 scheme is a voluntary UK government framework designed to manage NHS branded medicines spending without restricting list prices. Under the scheme, if a company’s medicine is priced above an agreed reference price, it must make a repayment to the NHS equivalent to the excess.
I was brought in to design a potential solution for a portal to track data that affected reference price payments, facilitate calculation of reference prices, and stored the data creating a unified source of truth.
What was done
I supported the creation of a user research plan to identify key user groups and understand their needs, pain points, and behaviours. I also collaborated with business stakeholders to understand governing policies and current ways of working. Drawing on these insights, I designed a portal for Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) users, and Company users.
The portal was used to track reference price payments for branded medicines in order to improve transparency by capturing reference prices and their underlying calculation data, facilitate submission of sales data by companies, and provide clear notification and query mechanisms so companies could understand and challenge their reference prices when needed.
Below are a few screenshots showing some of the designs created.
Why was it done
The Department of Health and Social Care manages a program that oversees Branded Medicines, and a part of this program are the reference price payments. These payments are made to keep NHS spending within budget, and create an equitable pricing system.
At the time, the payments were being tracked and calculated using spreadsheets, which was an error prone method fully reliant on third-party software. I was brought in to design a first look at a potential solution for a portal to track data that affected reference price payments, facilitate calculation of reference prices, and stored the data creating a unified source of truth.
How was it done
The existing system was one that relied heavily on human knowledge, and offline interactions. It was critical to ensure that whatever solution was designed accounted for the nuance that came with calculating reference prices, and the governing policies.
The design happened in two major phases (Discovery and Alpha) which are expanded upon below.
Discovery
In the discovery phase, the team needed to understand the real scope of the project, set goals and manage expectations. I supported the creation of a user research plan, and partook in the user research processes to get an understanding of potential user groups and their expectations.
In this phase, I documented the current journey based on insights synthesised from user interviews and focus groups. I also mapped the business requirements into user flows, and by comparing them with user needs raised from user research, I was able to design a low fidelity solution that addressed business and user needs.
In crafting this solution I was able to identify gaps in the proposed solution, and facilitated sessions with other colleagues (solution architects, developers, testers, platform engineers, business analysts, and product owners) individually and collectively to answer these questions and fill the gaps. These sessions were very valuable as the feedback gotten informed the work in the next phase.
Alpha
In this phase, I was able to use all the insights gathered in the discovery phase to design the first version of high fidelity designs. Once the high fidelity designs were completed, I then facilitated reviews with other colleagues to there no impediments to implementation.
After the reviews, I converted the designs to coded prototypes using html, css and javascript.
Conclusion
While this project was supposed to be a design for a Minimum Viable Product (MVP), I ensured I took accessibility needs into consideration. The solution was designed to be usable, accessible, and feasible. Equipping the DHSC users to track all relevant data to a branded medicine or reference price, calculate and update reference prices. It also equipped company users to view their reference prices, and all branded medicine information, and raising a query where appropriate.
I also created a robust design log to document the design process and decisions, ensuring that whoever works on the project in future has insight into the rationale behind design decisions, and can seamlessly move forward.