Walgreens STARS (Safety Tracking System)

Digitized a critical safety workflow, increasing reporting efficiency by 30%

Role: UX, UI

Date: 2025

The Problem

STARS is an internal Walgreens platform used to track safety events, identify trends, and reduce operational risk across pharmacy locations.

During MVP development, we identified a critical gap: the Monthly Peer Review (MPR) meeting process — a key operational workflow — was not captured digitally.

These meetings brought together pharmacy staff to review safety insights and required:

  • Attendance tracking and the ability to log the date/time

  • Acknowledgment of that month’s Monthly Peer Review

Despite their importance, this process remained entirely manual and disconnected from the system.

Why this was challenging

  • Legacy workflow that existed outside the system (analog process)

  • Critical feature missed during earlier discovery phases

  • Multiple roles involved (pharmacists, technicians, clerks)

  • Needed to integrate into an existing system without disrupting current STARS workflows

  • Required both operational tracking and audit visibility

Approach

We began by mapping the full workflow of Monthly Peer Review meetings:

  • Identified key roles and responsibilities

  • Defined how Pharmacy Store Managers would log and manage meetings

  • Aligned on how safety insights (Areas of Improvement) from STARS would connect to meeting discussions

Our goal was to seamlessly integrate meeting tracking into the existing Monthly Peer Review structure without adding friction to the process.

Solution

We designed a digital workflow that embedded meeting tracking directly within each Monthly Peer Review.

The system:

  • Allowed Pharmacy Store Managers to log attendance for each meeting

  • Captured roles and participants in a structured format

  • Allow the store manager to record date and time

  • Enabled editing and management of attendance records

  • Provided visibility into historical meetings across a 13-month period

By tying meetings directly to each Monthly Peer Review, we created a cohesive and intuitive experience aligned with existing workflows.

MPR Dashboard

  1. User can select an MPR from the table going back 13 months.

  2. An MPR within the table has 4 statuses:

    1. (MPR) Acknowledged

    2. (MPR) Needs attention

    3. (MPR) Template created by QA super users

    4. (MPR) Not created

MPR Details

  1. Addition of the “Meeting” table allowing the user to log a meeting during the monthly MPR review.

  2. A pharmacy store manager can see who has logged into their own terminal and acknowledged the MPR prior to the meeting.

  3. A user can add a new meeting (usually no more than 2-3).

  4. Each user, including the QA super user, must acknowledge the MPR each month.

Meeting Added

  1. Once a meeting has been added it is displayed in the table with the date/time. The link opens an editable version of the dialog originally used to create the meeting.

Add Meeting Dialog

  1. The user can add/edit the date/time for the meeting.

  2. Within the table the user can select/de-select each pharmacy staff member who has or hasn’t attended that month’s meeting.

Printout

The pharmacy store manager can print out that month’s meeting containing:

  1. Month, store and date are printed along the top.

  2. All Areas of Improvement (AOI), along with the summary of notes.

  3. All attendees are listed, along with whether they attended the meeting along with their MPR acknowledgement.

Testing & Iteration

Initial designs placed attendees at the top of the data hierarchy, prioritizing user lists over the meetings themselves.

Through design critique and iteration, we identified a key issue:

The system was emphasizing the wrong data.

We shifted the hierarchy to:

  • Make meetings the primary focus

  • Represent attendees as a secondary, expandable data point

  • Allow users to select a meeting and view detailed participation

This change improved clarity, reduced cognitive load, and better aligned with user intent.

Outcome

The final solution transformed a manual, disconnected process into a structured digital workflow within STARS.

Results:

  • Increased reporting efficiency by 30%

  • Centralized meeting tracking within the platform

  • Improved visibility into participation and compliance

  • Enabled QA teams to better identify safety trends and operational risks

  • Reduced reliance on manual, analog processes

Most importantly, the system created a more reliable and scalable way to connect safety insights with real-world team accountability.