Transforming healthcare at Auna
Building the digital relationship model in health.
Auna (NYSE) has 31 centers in Peru, Colombia, and Mexico, and more than 15,3k employees who serve 1.4 million health plan members through integrated hospitalization and insurance services, including OncoSalud, the region’s leading provider of oncology services, which treats +1 million patients a year.
Auna ran more than 32 digital assets with no shared logic between them. I led the research and design of the model that defines how the company relates to its users across their entire health journey, from prevention to treatment.
Year
2020-Present
Disciplines
Experience design
Interaction design
Design systems
Research
Product strategy
Management
Art direction
CONTEXT
A large ecosystem with no digital backbone
Auna had built a wide range of digital assets across the healthcare experience: clinics, labs, pharmacy, prevention, oncology, insurance, and the Auna app.
But each brand and business unit built its digital presence independently, resulting in a fragmented ecosystem with no coherent relationship between Auna and the people it served.
THE CHALLENGE
We're present through our users' entire lives, but the experience didn't show it
Auna accompanies people from their happiest moments to their hardest ones. That lifelong bond wasn't translated into a consistent digital relationship model.
"Users feel more and more unsupported by a fragmented healthcare system […]"
Finding from user research
DESIGN QUESTION
How might we define the value Auna wants to offer its users,
and translate it into one integrated digital relationship model?
DISCOVER
Started with users, not screens
Working closely with stakeholders, I conducted in-depth interviews to identify business opportunities and user pain points. Field research with patients, caregivers, and medical staff across all business units.
54 in-depth interviews
6 triads
5 guerrilla interviews
Patient
“The Delgado campus website is very comprehensive, but the others don’t have the same information, for example, the doctors on staff or the specialties offered.
And Oncosalud is different, too.”
Employee
“There’s a lot of demand; each doctor has brought their patients from the clinic where they used to work. I use different notebooks for each doctor. Plus, I have more than 200 messages on WhatsApp.”
Business Leader
“We can be pioneers in building something that doesn’t yet exist, healthy longevity and prevention. Having Oncosalud as an ally helps us, and we could promote a different approach to health.”
Define
User personas built on evidence, not assumption
From the research we created personas representing real behavior patterns around health, used to align every team around the same needs.
User personas used to guide design decisions.
An integrated system, not one more app
We needed to make Auna's relationship with its users tangible through a system that brought order, not one that added more touchpoints.
Insights:
Unified Space
Brings together all digital offerings for affiliates and patients
Backbone Ecosystem
Provides order and consistency and connects digital assets
Cyclical Flow
Users can access the system from different entry points
Family-Centric
The user as part of a family unit rather than as an individual
Complement
In-Person Care
It aims to coexist with in-person care, not to replace it
DESIGN
The user's journey around their health
We translated the model into a journey covering the moments when a user relates to Auna, no matter where they enter.
Recommendation
Entry point into the ecosystem, shaped by prevention and community.
Search & booking
Finding the right provider and booking without friction.
Care
In-person visit or teleconsultation, depending on the moment.
Follow-up
Results, prescriptions, and orders accessible in one place.
Pandemic
DELIVER - PANDEMIC
Digital technology takes on great importance
When the pandemic hit, the question changed:
How can we leverage our understanding of the ecosystem and our vision for a new relationship with users?
We needed to integrate this into the telemedicine tool so that it serves as a definitive asset within this new relationship, rather than just an emergency solution.
The world prioritized new needs
Provide virtual care to patients who need to see a doctor
Empower patients with information about managing their treatment (empathy and building trust)
Streamline the administrative processes and logistics related to medications and tests
To be a trusted source for medical care. Creating my digital health profile (prescriptions, etc.)
The need for screening tests due to fear of COVID-19 transmission
What difference we make, 5 years later?
From a conceptual model to products used by thousands of people
As of June 2026, the digital ecosystem born from this project is still the backbone of Auna's relationship with its users, and it's still growing.
Digital Bookings
2M+
Channel share
50%
Payments
18M
NPS ⭐️
60%
The digital channel keeps gaining ground
Between January and June 2026, App/Web's share of total digital bookings grew from 44% to 50%, displacing the call center (from 19% to 12%). The trend confirms the model's original hypothesis: users prefer to manage their relationship with Auna without intermediaries once the channel earns their trust.
Who uses it today
The profile that adopted the digital channel most is women, 63% of users, with an average age of 36, nearly a decade younger than those who book through admission desks or the call center. It's almost a perfect match for "Lucha Guerrero", the caregiver persona we defined in the original research.
PRODUCTS BORN FROM THE MODEL
The model stopped being an internal guideline and became product infrastructure
Clínica Digital 360°
Medical care without insurance via teleconsultation, across multiple specialties, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Public website Auna.org
Auna's new public-facing site, with a unified information architecture and vision, and a new proposition inviting users to look after their health.
