Designing an AI-Enabled Kidney Wellness Coach
A Digital Strategy Grounded in Lived Experience
The Kidney Wellness Hub helps people living with chronic kidney disease manage their physical, mental and social well-being. Building on the Hub’s early success, the Kidney Foundation of B.C. and Yukon engaged J5 to explore how an AI-enabled digital coach could make its trusted resources more personalized, accessible and easier to navigate.
We assessed the platform’s readiness for AI, engaged patients and care partners, mapped the end-to-end kidney disease journey and identified where digital support could have the greatest impact. This created a human-centred and evidence-based foundation for designing a safe, trusted and clinically responsible “kidney buddy.”
INDUSTRY
Healthcare
CLIENT
Kidney Foundation of BC
WHY IT MATTERS
Living with chronic kidney disease can involve complex medical decisions, significant lifestyle changes and an ongoing emotional burden. People are often required to navigate unfamiliar information and fragmented supports when they are frightened, overwhelmed or adjusting to a new reality.
Our research identified diagnosis and the beginning of dialysis as particularly difficult moments. By making trusted information easier to find and tailoring support to each person’s needs, an AI-enabled coach could help people feel more informed, connected and confident throughout their kidney journey.
PROCESS HIGHLIGHTS
We interviewed 13 patients and care partners to understand the realities of living with chronic kidney disease and identify the moments when personalized support matters most.
We audited the Kidney Wellness Hub, mapped the end-to-end patient journey and developed the strategic, technical and clinical requirements for safely integrating an AI-enabled coach.
Impact
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User Level
Ensured the experiences of patients and care partners directly shaped the strategy for the next generation of the Kidney Wellness Hub.
Identified opportunities to provide personalized information, mental health support and community connections during the most challenging moments of the kidney journey.
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Service Level
Established the requirements for an AI coach that can help people find trusted information, navigate questions and access relevant programs without replacing clinical care.
Defined important guardrails for privacy, consent, accessibility, medical accuracy, crisis response and human escalation.
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Organizational Level
Gave the Kidney Foundation a clear direction for co-designing, prototyping and testing an AI-enabled wellness service with patients, care partners and healthcare providers.
Developed a case for continued investment projecting that personalized digital support could create between $13.6 million and $25.5 million in health-system cost avoidance over three years through fewer preventable hospitalizations and delayed dependence on dialysis.