intrahospital connection made easy.
TIMELINE
February - April 2023
MY ROLE
Solo student project
PROBLEM
Outdated technology makes for low interoperability and slow workflow.
While shadowing at my local hospital, typical interdepartmental workflow looked something like this …
The resident received word of a patient needing an MRI
After scrolling through an endless series of extensions, she dials the correct one on a landline
The imaging department is busy, so she idly waits for them to return their call, but cannot move locations as her extension must remain consistent
After several minutes, she receives a call back that there is space available for a scan, but by then she is already occupied with another task.
SOLUTION
An all-encompassing communication platform across various hospital departments.
Coordination
50% of all adverse events detected in a study of primary care physicians were associated with communication difficulties
The CHIDS finds that poor intrahospital communication costs the industry upward of $12 billion per anum
For 14,000 in-hospital deaths, communication error were found to be the lead cause
Communication is crucial to the health and safety of patients.
I began by reading up on current research regarding technology in hospital settings and wondered the effects of the current workflow I witnessed. I was shocked to see several adverse statistics from the National Institute of Health:
I interviewed 5 residents at Ronald Regan Hospital about their daily workflow when getting hold of other departments. Residents are typically left to do these communicative tasks under the supervision of attending physicians. I asked them the following questions to gauge their frustrations and analyze trends regarding inefficient communication in the hospital.
“50% of all adverse events detected in a study of primary care physicians were associated with communication difficulties”
Research Questions:
Say your supervisor asks you to book a CT scan for a patient, what is the process for doing something like this?
How do you typically communicate with other departments in the hospital like labs, imaging, or consultations?
Do you often find yourself forgetting or juggling many calls or messages at once or are the duties you have manageably handed to you?
Do you find yourself memorizing extension numbers to dial certain departments in the hospital?
How does your supervisor assign tasks to you on a daily basis?
WHITE PAPER RESEARCH/ USER INTERVIEWS
DESIGN PROCESS
Consultation
40% of all ED visits require at least one consultation by emergency medicine providers
Incorporate 5Cs in one form: contact, communicate, core question, collaborate, close the loop
Prioritize requests by urgency and get notification during approval to aid multitasking
Communication is unorganized, leaving employees with low self-efficacy and precious minutes wasted.
Theme 3: Wasting Time
Almost all of the residents reported the biggest time wasted during the day is trying to get a hold of the right people at the right time.
They report sifting through pages and pages of laminated extension numbers to speak with external departments, and most of the time, they are put on hold or are expecting a call back. This also makes them immobile from their stations.
FINAL DESIGN
Low Fidelity Sketches
Wireframing
User Testing
Put Requests in Order of Priority
At first, I planned to put the requests in order of newest to oldest, but after user feedback, I decided to prioritize from high to low via color.
I also added an urgency category on the form for tasks and requests so this category would appear, but on the home page, only the most urgent are marked.
Remove Ability to Pick Up Requests
My users said rarely do tasks appear in an open ended manner like this for the residents to pick up.
Instead, I made the section a dashboard where users can see their completed requests to get a better understanding of what they have already done to avoid redundancy.
Remove Wheelchair and Add Status Page
Users said wheeling patients is something handled by front desk staff and typically happens on the fly.
They much preferred knowing how full certain labs were to send patients to the appropriate ones, along with info about what labs are done where.
Wireframing
Task Management
See requests sent from other departments by urgency
See all pending requests and time passed since sent
View tasks that are already completed to avoid redundancy
Easily navigate to other departments for requests via navigation bar
MAIN INSIGHTS
Theme 1: Multitasking
Multitasking has been proven inefficient according to scientific literature, yet my interviewees find it a major part of their workflow.
Many of them reported getting a task to schedule a consultation, they call the department, then move on to the next task, but before long, they get a call back, completely forgetting where they left off.
Theme 2: Task Management
Most residents report their duties being verbally told to them, then frivolously writing them down on a piece of paper that could easily be lost.
There is no formal designation of roles, and often there is redundancy because residents forgot they have already completed a task.
Wireframing
User Testing
Prototype & Final Screens
TAKEAWAYS & NEXT STEPS
This was my first solo project so it was definitely a learning curve just creating prototypes and wire framing without guidelines. If I had more time I would definitely interview a wider variety of hospital employees to better gauge how each department interacted. I also hope to implement several new features to easily integrate it with health care intranets like EPIC Care Link such as:
A chat feature that could be attached to a task request
Autofill or search history to ease workflow even more
Daily schedule integration, though this may get into productivity platform territory
A master list of searchable extensions in case the system fails, this is easier than the current paper process.