Helping healthcare professionals come back to their learning

The app had plenty of good learning content, but signing up for something did not always mean coming back to it. I put together a proposal for how notifications could help: push notifications outside the app, a notification center inside it, and clear paths between the two.

After the system was introduced, we saw a clear increase in engagement. It was a team effort, and I was glad to see the idea hold up once it was in people’s hands.

Registering for a webinar or enrolling in a course is just the start. People sign up weeks before an event, leave a quiz half done, or lose track of a course deadline. Busy clinicians have a lot on their minds, so this is easy to understand.

My job was to help them notice these moments at the right time and know what to do next, without adding more noise to their day.

Before drawing any screens, I listed the moments where a nudge could actually be useful. They fell into four types. Pick one to see how it shows up as a push notification and inside the app.

People can come back from outside the app or from inside it. Whichever way they come in, they end up in the same notification center, so a push they swiped away is not a reminder lost for good.

In the notification center I used category tabs, short messages, and one visible action per item, like “Register”, “Resume Course” or “See Courses”.

The hope was that people could tell at a glance whether something was about a course they had already started or an invitation to try something new.

A notification is only as helpful as the screen it opens. I mapped each action to a destination, so a tap takes people to their next step instead of dropping them on the home screen.

I presented the concept to the team in three parts: the idea itself, a prototype demo, and an open conversation about next steps.

I closed with two questions, because the team knew things I didn’t. Does this fit your vision and priorities for the MIMS mobile app? And what should we focus on first as we move forward?

After the notification system was introduced, we saw a clear increase in engagement. I’m happy it helped, and a lot of people had a hand in getting it there.

The biggest lesson for me was that a notification is a small part of a longer journey. It needs the right moment, a clear reason to come back, and a sensible place to land. If I picked this up again, I’d want to keep learning from how people respond and adjust the timing and wording from there.