The Playbook for a Truly Unified Mobile Experience [Webinar Recap]

Digital fragmentation at health systems isn’t just inconvenient. It’s a growing barrier to patient access, engagement, and satisfaction. During Becker’s Healthcare Digital Innovation + Patient Experience and Marketing Summit, leaders from UW Health and Tidelands Health joined Gozio for a thoughtful conversation on how they tackled this challenge head-on with a unified mobile experience for their patients.

The session, “One App, Infinite Touchpoints: The Playbook for a Truly Unified Mobile Experience,” explored the behind-the-scenes process of simplifying digital tools to deliver a seamless experience for their patients. The 30-minute session was moderated by Gozio’s Chief Strategy Officer Katie Logan and featured Crystal Albrent, the Director of Digital Health and Emerging Technologies at UW Health, and Amy Stevens, VP and Chief Marketing Officer at Tidelands Health.

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The Fragmentation Situation

To kick off the session, Crystal from UW Health and Amy from Tidelands Health discussed challenges that are familiar to most health systems across the country. They shared stories of disconnected tools and resource-intensive digital strategies. Even though their organizations are over 1,000 miles apart, their issues were the same: patients needed to go from app to app to manage basic aspects of their care, negatively impacting the patient experience and causing breakdowns in communication.

When asked about the challenges that Tidelands Health faced, Amy said “We were using two different patient portals; one for inpatient one for outpatient. They were clunky and it wasn’t a great experience for our patients.”

Crystal echoed a similar sentiment, saying “Our organization faced fragmented digital landscapes with multiple apps and point solutions, often leading to patient confusion and inconsistent engagement.”

A Vision for One Unified Platform

Rather than trying to solve the issue with another point solution, both health systems made the strategic decision to create a unified experience, with the patient at the center. They envisioned a single mobile app that could bring together all their digital tools in a cohesive, branded experience. They started with the foundation of what they needed: a platform that would integrate seamlessly with their Epic patient portal and other existing tools. The goal was to reduce friction, reinforce their brand, and deliver a more seamless patient experience without increasing burden on staff. 

“We referred to it as a one-stop-shop. We wanted to make sure we could direct our patients and prospective patients to one place and try to tailor it to the unique needs of our system and our patients.” - Crystal Albrent, Director of Digital Health and Emerging Technologies, UW Health

Making it Happen

Since this solution would impact almost every department in the health system in one way or another, both leaders shared the key to success was starting by aligning with other department leaders. Crystal described how UW Health took a collaborative approach between their IT, marketing, and operational teams. The leaders recognized the need to hear the voice of their patients, so they also decided to bring in their human-centered research design team. The teams worked together to map out the current state of their digital patient experience vs. the future state they wanted to achieve. 

Amy shared that Tidelands had a similar approach for collaboration among department leaders and patient feedback. When it came to gathering patient feedback, they were able to utilize their existing digital patient panel. The panel is made up of about 20,000 of their current patients who have agreed to engage with Tidelands on a regular basis to share feedback and evaluate ideas.

With input from all corners of the organization and the patients they serve, they were able to prioritize features that would make an immediate difference such as easy access to MyChart, digital wayfinding, and urgent care wait times. Screenshots of the apps (seen below) illustrate how these features came together in a clean, intuitive interface that reflects each organization’s unique brand.

Meaningful Results and Lessons Learned

The impact for both UW Health and Tidelands has been significant. Both systems have seen a strong uptick in mobile app adoption and returning users, especially when it comes to MyChart usage. Patients are engaging more consistently with the tools that the systems provide for them.

For key takeaways, Amy and Crystal shared actionable advice for other healthcare leaders looking to enhance their mobile strategy:

• Start with the patient journey. Understand what friction points you’re trying to eliminate.
• Don’t wait for perfect. Launch, learn, and evolve. Let engagement data guide your next steps.
• Secure early alignment. Make sure leadership understands the strategic value—from patient experience to operational efficiency.
• Choose the right partner. Flexibility, scalability, and vision alignment were critical in making the project work.

In closing, Amy Stevens shared this piece of advice: “Don’t be afraid to jump into this journey. Your consumers want this, they expect it, they are wondering why you don’t have it already because they’re engaging in this technology in the other facets of their lives.”

If you missed the live session, you can catch the full conversation on demand here.

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