INVITAE · SERVICE DESIGN · JOURNEY MAPPING
Anchoring a Digital Health Platform in the Patient Journey
The challenge
Invitae had grown through acquisition, each with distinct products and capabilities, brought together under a shared ambition: build a unified Digital Health Platform that could serve patients across the genetic testing and care management journey.
The problem was that the teams didn't yet share a common vision. Each company's leadership had a different mental model of how the platform would work, which patients it would serve, and how their product fit in. Before any platform could be designed, someone had to create the shared understanding that didn't yet exist.
Starting in the wrong place
We began where most strategy projects begin: the future state. What should the platform look like? What should it do?
It quickly became clear that was the wrong question. The six leadership teams couldn't agree on future state because they didn't have a shared view of the present. Each team described the platform differently in what it was for, who it served, how their product connected to the others.
We needed to anchor the conversation in something everyone could agree on: the patient.
Choosing the anchor: breast cancer
Our research team proposed mapping a specific patient journey as the foundation — a concrete, real-world scenario that could make the abstract platform question tangible. We chose breast cancer deliberately: it represents one of the highest-volume opportunities in hereditary cancer testing, a space where early genetic testing can genuinely change outcomes.
Research: 10 interviews across the care system
We conducted qualitative interviews spanning the full breast cancer care continuum:
Organizational impact
Before the blueprint, the six leadership teams were in conflict. Each was advocating for their product's importance without
a shared frame of reference. After the blueprint, they could see the system.
Teams that had been in conflict aligned around a shared patient journey for the first time
Blueprint used in two cross-company executive workshops to drive platform capability decisions
Highlighted where teams needed to build toward each other rather than independently
Gave leadership a shared language and shared picture — the foundation for cross-team platform development
Directly shaped capability mapping for the Digital Health Platform roadmap
