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MedPass

A healthcare app concept for Austrian patients - one place to manage prescriptions, access medical documents, and control who sees your health data. Developed at FH JOANNEUM with an interdisciplinary team.

2026UX/UI Designer · ResearcherFigma, User Research, Prototyping, Information Architecture
UX/UI DesignMobile AppHealthcareUniversity Project

MedPass is a mobile app concept for Austrian patients that consolidates prescriptions, health documents, and data access control in one place. The project was developed during Summer Semester 2026 at FH JOANNEUM as part of an interdisciplinary team combining Interaction Design and Internal Management students. My role covered the full UX and UI design process: research, information architecture, interaction design, visual design, and the complete brand identity.

The problem

Austria's healthcare system is digital in infrastructure but fragmented in practice. Patients hold multiple systems - ELGA for records, individual pharmacy apps for prescriptions, separate portals for appointments - none of which talk to each other clearly. During qualitative interviews, three recurring friction points emerged: people did not know what prescriptions they had outstanding, they could not easily see who had accessed their health data, and navigating the paper-based and digital systems in parallel felt like a second job.

Interview approach

The research phase centred on seven semi-structured interviews with Austrian patients who had different relationships to the healthcare system: people managing recurring prescriptions, people who only visit doctors occasionally, international students navigating Austrian systems for the first time, and older participants who rely on a mix of paper documents, phone calls, and family support. Instead of asking whether they wanted another health app, we asked them to reconstruct recent healthcare moments step by step: getting a prescription, finding a pharmacy, receiving a lab result, bringing documents to an appointment, or trying to understand who could see their ELGA data.

The most useful interview material came from breakdown moments. Participants rarely described the system as completely broken; they described small uncertainties that stacked up: not knowing whether an e-prescription was already active, forgetting which pharmacy had a medication in stock, searching through emails for a PDF at an appointment, or feeling uneasy because data access technically existed but was not explained in patient language. These stories shaped MedPass as a trust and visibility layer rather than a feature-heavy health super-app.

Pain points from the interviews

01
Status is invisible
Patients understand that prescriptions are digital, but not where they are in the journey: issued, active, reserved, collected, expired, or still waiting for a doctor or pharmacy action.
02
Paper still acts as backup
Even digitally confident participants kept screenshots, printed documents, or email attachments because they did not fully trust that the right document would be easy to retrieve when needed.
03
Health data access feels abstract
Participants had heard of ELGA, but most could not explain who could access what, for how long, or how they would notice unusual access. The need was not only privacy control, but plain-language visibility.
01
Prescription confusion
Patients lose track of outstanding e-prescriptions, expiry dates, and which pharmacy has already fulfilled a prescription - leading to missed medication and redundant visits.
02
Data access is a black box
ELGA allows doctors to access health records, but most patients have no clear visibility into who viewed their data and when. Trust and control are missing.
03
Document overload
Discharge papers, lab results, and referrals exist across hospital portals, emails, and paper - no unified view, no reliable search, no way to share quickly in an emergency.
7
qualitative interviews conducted with Austrian patients
Primary research
TF#06
top finding selected: prescription transparency as the core focus
Research synthesis
3
core user journeys mapped across prescriptions, documents, and data access
Service blueprint

Research

We ran seven qualitative interviews with Austrian patients across different age groups and healthcare usage patterns. Interviews were semi-structured, covering recent interactions with the healthcare system, their awareness of ELGA and e-prescriptions, and specific moments where things went wrong or caused confusion. We synthesised findings using affinity mapping, grouping statements into themes and then prioritising by frequency and severity. The process produced twelve top findings (TF#01–TF#12). The team selected TF#06 - the invisibility of prescription status and data access - as the primary design focus, because it had the highest frequency across interviews and the clearest gap between current system capability and user expectation.

MedPass research problem statement slide showing the core problem framing around Austrian healthcare fragmentation.
Core problem framing - synthesised from interview analysis and desk research.
MedPass top finding TF#06 - prescription transparency selected as primary focus from twelve research findings.
TF#06 emerged as the primary focus: prescription status and data access are invisible to patients.

Market context

We mapped the existing landscape of patient-facing healthcare tools in Austria against key capability dimensions: prescription management, document access, data control transparency, and appointment coordination. Most tools addressed one or two of these - the official ELGA portal covers document access but not prescription status; pharmacy apps handle pickup but not history or data visibility. MedPass was positioned as the first layer that cuts across all four dimensions for the patient, without replacing the clinical systems that healthcare providers already use.

MedPass market analysis comparing existing Austrian healthcare tools across prescription, document, data control, and appointment dimensions.
Competitive landscape - existing tools cover partial needs, MedPass spans all four patient-facing dimensions.

Service blueprint

The service blueprint maps the full prescription journey - from a doctor issuing an e-prescription through the patient receiving a notification, locating a nearby pharmacy, picking up the medication, and viewing the completed record in their history. It traces actions across the patient, the MedPass app layer, backend systems (ELGA, pharmacy network), and supporting actors (GP, pharmacist). The blueprint was critical for identifying exactly where the current system fails: the patient has no confirmed visibility between prescription issuance and pharmacy pickup, and no log of who accessed what.

Full MedPass service blueprint mapping prescription journey across patient actions, app layer, ELGA backend, and pharmacy network.
Service blueprint - surfaces the gap between prescription issuance and patient visibility.

Information architecture

The information architecture organises MedPass around four primary destinations: Home (overview and notifications), Prescriptions (active, pending, completed), Documents (health records, lab results, discharge papers), and Processes (data access log, access control settings). Navigation is flat - no nested menu hierarchies - because the target users include elderly and lower-digital-literacy patients who need direct, predictable access to each section. The IA also defines where emergency document sharing and quick pharmacy location fit within the flow, without requiring users to navigate away from their current context.

MedPass information architecture sitemap showing four primary destinations: Home, Prescriptions, Documents, Processes - with flat navigation structure.
Flat IA structure - four primary sections, no buried navigation, designed for low-friction access.

Lean canvas

The business framing of MedPass - validated as part of the interdisciplinary module - positioned it as a patient-side companion layer to Austria's existing healthcare infrastructure, rather than a competing clinical system. The lean canvas identified the customer segment (Austrian patients using ELGA), the core value proposition (unified view of prescriptions, documents, and data access in one app), key partnerships (ELGA API, pharmacy networks, ID Austria authentication), and revenue model (government procurement / integration licensing, not a consumer subscription).

MedPass lean canvas covering problem, solution, unique value proposition, customer segment, revenue streams, and key partnerships.
Lean canvas - government-side procurement model, not a consumer subscription.