A digital front door for medical tourism

Care is affordable abroad — getting there safely isn't

Medical procedures have become unaffordable for many in the U.S., while the same care is far more approachable in other countries. But finding reputable providers, arranging travel and accommodation, booking excursions, and staying in contact with doctors are almost entirely separate, disconnected steps.

The worst part is payments. What does someone needing medical care do if the wire transfer fails, or the provider turns out not to be reputable? There was no recourse for the patient.

A trusted one-stop-shop that didn't exist yet

A medical tourism company wanted to build a platform connecting patients traveling for procedures with accredited facilities — and enabling flexible, secure payments between patients and providers — while creating value for both sides that the market didn't offer today.

Leading it from blank page to validated, built concept

As Lead Innovation Strategist, I owned the engagement end to end and the cross-functional team behind it — strategists, designers, developers, video producers, subject-matter experts, product owners, and the account team. I planned the design-thinking workshop so the team had everything needed to build a functional prototype and advertisement, drove client alignment to a single experience strategy, and kept the work aligned to the account's broader roadmap — including third-party payment and insurance partners.

Forty weeks, structured to de-risk every step

The rigor behind the concept

A validated concept doesn't come from a brainstorm — it comes from building the evidence. Much of the actual output, sanitized (client specifics removed, structure intact):

Patient empathy map — what they say, think, feel, and fear

Hopes & fears — surfacing what the room was really afraid of

Composite character profile — the patient the whole platform had to serve

A working prototype, not a slide

The week didn't end in a deck — it ended in a functional, high-fidelity prototype of the patient's trusted front door. App and client branding redacted.

Patient home — curated next steps

Secure, flexible payment at checkout

Find an accredited provider, worldwide

A first-of-its-kind platform, and a real market opened

The engagement produced a validated, user-tested concept and carried it into development — an end-to-end platform for patient research, booking, communication, follow-up, and secure payments. It created new partnerships for both the client and the network, spun up a new accreditation process, and set the stage for first-follower competition.

$100M+5-year product potential

$47B+industry space it opened into

Firstof-its-kind end-to-end platform; new partnerships & accreditation process