Designing a Digital Backbone for a Patient-Centred Care Model
A rehabilitation provider established a clear digital foundation for growth by mapping the end-to-end patient journey and defining the processes required to support personalised care at scale.
Context
As a specialist rehabilitation provider, the organisation delivers highly personalised care journeys that vary significantly between patients. As demand increased, leadership recognised the need for a digital uplift to support consistency, visibility and future growth.
The risk was familiar: introducing technology without first defining process would simply digitise inefficiency. Patient notes, clinical touchpoints and discharge pathways needed to be handled with sensitivity and precision, something generic systems could not support without clear design intent.
What was required was a blueprint for a digital backbone grounded in how care is actually delivered.
Approach
This engagement focused on ensuring process defined technology, not the other way around.
Define
The first step was understanding the patient journey in full.
End-to-end customer journey mapping was undertaken across intake, treatment, progression and discharge. Every clinical and operational touchpoint was identified, ensuring the full experience, not just system interactions, was clearly understood.
Working closely with clinicians, standard, repeatable actions were separated from non-standard, highly personalised elements of care. This distinction was critical in designing a future platform capable of supporting both consistency and flexibility.
Align
With the journey defined, attention shifted to aligning process, cost and future capability.
By articulating workflows in detail, cost inputs and outputs were mapped across both the current and proposed models. This gave leadership clarity on where effort was being spent, where inefficiencies existed and how future investment could be optimised.
The defined workflows were translated into a structured set of digital requirements, forming the backbone for any future platform implementation.
Govern
Governance was established through clarity and readiness.
Rather than locking the organisation into premature tooling decisions, the engagement delivered a complete, implementation-ready blueprint. This ensured future technology investment would be guided by defined scenarios, agreed processes and clear operational intent.
Outcome
The organisation gained clarity, confidence and a path to scale.
Patient journeys became more consistent and transparent, internal workflows were simplified and staff gained a shared understanding of how care is delivered across the organisation. Leadership gained clear financial visibility and a practical framework for future digital investment.
With a defined digital backbone in place, the organisation is now positioned to implement technology deliberately, supporting personalised care while enabling sustainable growth.