■ Praised for outstanding service design that reduces the risk of misdiagnosis/oversight and lowers the barrier to use for doctors and patients
TOKYO – October 20, 2021 – LINE Corporation announced today that LINE Healthcare Corporation has won a Good Design Award 2021 for LINE Doctor, a telemedicine service operated by LINE Healthcare Corporation, a joint venture company established by LINE and M3, Inc.
LINE Doctor is a one-stop service that allows patients to book medical appointments, speak with a doctor over free video call, and make payments for consultations all on the LINE app. This means that LINE users can connect with a doctor when they are feeling ill (provided certain conditions are met) without needing to download a separate app.
According to the award organizers, LINE Doctor was recognized for addressing the issues of reducing misdiagnosis/oversight risks and lowering the barriers to use for doctors and patients alike. "LINE Doctor boasts an outstanding service design that tackles these problems," they noted. "It takes something that users are already familiar with—the LINE app—and lets doctors set up face-to-face appointments after online consultations (when needed), and allows patients to make bookings and get examinations and prescriptions all from within the app.”
In April 2020, the Japanese government published a notification temporarily permitting telemedicine as COVID-19 infections rose. Subsequently, many medical institutions began developing services to facilitate online consultations and mitigate the risks of infection while in hospital or on the way there. LINE Doctor aims to support the medical experience, helping medical professionals choose how best to examine patients according to their symptoms and circumstances. The service's simple design aims to lower the barrier to use for institutions, which had been an issue in earlier efforts to establish telemedicine systems.
Furthermore, medical institutions are provided with a Starter Kit as a tool to help explain LINE Doctor to patients who are first-time telemedicine users, and guide them on how to use it. The Starter Kit includes posters, POP displays, stickers, user guides, and hospital cards that patients can use when booking an appointment. Illustrations of the LINE Friends characters also lend the medical service a sense of familiarity.
LINE Doctor Starter Kit
The Starter Kit was created through the combined efforts of the LINE Creative Center and LINE Healthcare's designers. In addition to the Good Design Award, the LINE Creative Center also won the Red Dot Award: Brands & Communication Design 2021 earlier this year.
The Good Design Award defines design as anything—whether tangible or intangible—that is created to fulfill someone's ideals or purpose. Since its foundation in 1957, the Award has been evaluating and honoring a variety of designs, including industrial goods, architecture, software, systems, and services.
For more information:
・GOOD DESIGN AWARD: https://www.g-mark.org/about/
・GOOD DESIGN AWARD LINE Doctor's award page: https://www.g-mark.org/award/describe/52831?token=i31nfRpkXt
・LINE Doctor: https://doctor.line.me/ (Japanese)