Patient journey research explores what living with a health condition is really like: the first symptoms, diagnosis, treatment, daily routines and the moments that are hard. A diary over several weeks captures what a single interview misses, such as a bad morning, a missed dose or a conversation with a pharmacist. With Zolensa, patients and carers share these moments by video, voice note or text, in their own language, under consent and privacy settings the agency controls.
When to use patient journey research
- Mapping a care pathway: from first symptoms to diagnosis, treatment and follow-up.
- Living with a condition: routines, workarounds, emotions and support at home.
- Treatment and device use: how people take a medicine or use a device in daily life, and what gets in the way.
- Carers and families: what supporting someone takes, and what would help.
- Health professionals: how doctors, nurses or pharmacists see the same journey, in a separate group.
How a study runs on Zolensa
- Set up consent carefully. Start from the standard consent wording or your own, add required and optional tick boxes, and publish it in every study language. Each signature is kept with the exact version the participant read.
- Offer gentle formats. Some people do not want to be on camera on a hard day. Offer a voice note or text as well as video, and make questions optional where it makes sense.
- Plan the journey. Tasks open day by day. A journey map question lets participants rate each step of their pathway, with a note on why.
- Keep the team small. Roles decide who sees what. Clients see participants by code only and cannot export.
- Stay in touch. Participants can write to the research team in the app, and you can reply or ask a follow-up about one entry.
- Analyse with evidence. AI suggests themes, and every quote is checked word for word against what the participant said, with a link to the moment.
Zolensa features that help
- Consent in 30 languages. Participants read and sign before any task. You see who signed which version and when.
- Data kept to a minimum. Photos lose their location data. Participants are shown by code, and contact details are visible only to the team running the study.
- Retention you set. Each study has a retention period. Participants can stop at any time and ask for deletion from the app.
- Private files. Recordings sit in private storage and play through links that expire after a few hours.
- Voice notes and transcripts. Talking can be easier than typing or filming. Voice notes are transcribed and translated.
- Audit trail. Sign-ins, exports, downloads, consent and deletions are logged.
Plan for these
- Ethics and rules come first. Health research may need an ethics review, and pharmaceutical projects may need adverse event reporting. Agree the process with your client before fieldwork, and say it in the consent form.
- Explain what not to share. Ask people not to film medical records, other patients or anyone who has not agreed.
- Design for tiredness. Short tasks, flexible windows and the option to skip a day respect people's health.
- Use codes in reports. Clients see codes, not names. Keep it that way in highlight reels and quotes.
- Plan the end. Thank people, tell them how long their data is kept, and delete it when the retention period ends.
