How might we preserve patient data continuity among ER workers?
Timeline: Jan 21-22, 2017
Project Type: Web
My Role: UX/UI Lead
Tools: Adobe XD, Illustrator
Project Type: Web
My Role: UX/UI Lead
Tools: Adobe XD, Illustrator
Context
Fraser Health, a health authority in British Columbia was the first of its kind to hold a hackathon. Here, I met team member Daniel Raff, who is a medical student. His past year was his first year of clinical medicine at Burnaby Hospital in the emergency department. On one of his first days, a patient came in who was quadriplegic and had significant abdominal pain. He was subsequently sent off to the ICU, but Raff never saw or heard from him again.
This was a major missed learning opportunity - a missed learning opportunity as a resident student and staff. If he could easily access information on what happened, it would result in better patient outcomes and reduce costs significantly.
Target User Interviews
Talking with many stakeholders, including 5 emergency doctors and 2 staff, we discovered that they agreed that this is a major problem. If trackER could address it, they would use on a regular basis. One resident doctor said this:
"The best Emerg preceptor I’ve had would look up his patients every 2 weeks and find out what happened to them, which he learned from and incorporated into his practice."
- Dr. Adrienne Rose, R1 Emergency Resident
- Dr. Adrienne Rose, R1 Emergency Resident
TrackER is leveraging the data that’s available to make it easy for Emerg doctors to learn from what actually happened. The target market is therefore medical residents and emergency staff.
Dashboard
In the interface, the ER doctor signs in and can immediately see their recent admissions. In the two columns, they can compare their provisional diagnosis they gave in the ER, as well as the discharge diagnosis. One is able to favourite patients of interest and click to see more details about the patient.
On the left, patients can be sorted by date of admission (as indicated by the calendar icon) as well as by morbidity/mortality (M/M icon). The search bar on the top right can be used to find specific diagnoses. Red and green bars next to the patient's name indicates a correct or incorrect match between admission and discharge diagnoses.
Patient Details
Clicking on the patient triggers an accordion style box that contains more specific information such as the MRP contact, or whether the patient has returned from the same complaint shortly after being released (indicated by the term 'bounceback').
Algorithms will pick up key phrases such as 'ICU' or 'intubated' and display them as tags on the right hand side, to support additional data that explains more about their condition beyond the main diagnosis.
Beneath each match rate is a link to educational resources often used my medical professionals, such as UpToDate and QxMD. These are made easily accessible so that users can quickly refresh their memory about that particular condition.
Competency Reports
While the primary offering of TrackER is learning, a services will be offered that tells doctors what they're adept at and what they need to improve in through annual competency reports. This will utilize the data of health authorities, monetizing through a subscription model.
As medicine is becoming a competency based specialty rather than an one based on schooling, there is a need make sure employees are always improving their knowledge even after they go into the profession.
User Testing
I asked end users to look at what we’re developing and added features upon suggestion such as ‘bounceback,’ which is a term that indicates a patient who returns to the ER with the same complaint shortly after being released. There was also a sense of confusion about the percentage of correct and incorrect diagnoses, so I added the number of correct diagnoses beneath.
Product Validation
For Fraser Health, if doctors are improving their ability to diagnose patients by learning, they’re approving patient outcomes, and cost saving. Additionally, a doctor who uses this platform daily offers Fraser Health an opportunity to engage with front line personnel (ie. through Fraser Health focused ads.)
End users have said they would use this, paying additionally for annual competency reports. To proceed, TrackER will use Fraser Health's data to run the program, as well as validating the product to show that it really does improve patient outcomes. Future goals include engaging other healthcare authorities beyond just doctors, such as nurses and other medical personnel.
Reflection
Fraser Health was the first overnight hackathon that I attended. When looking for events to attend, I gravitated towards those that were service oriented, as they posed deeper, urgent problems facing society today.
Struggling due to my unfamiliarity with the medical field, I had to quickly familiarize myself with the problem space. By asking many questions, I was able to understand the material well enough to construct a proper hierarchy of information. Applying technology to services spaces allowed me to both learn more about the world around me, and directly apply my skills to existing structural issues.
Designing with such a dense amount of information was a challenge - I wanted to steer away from too many lines, choosing instead to use subtle coloured boxes and white space to differentiate columns.
TrackER is the solution to both a missed learning opportunity and professional accountability - thereby enabling ER professionals to accurately diagnose and keep track of their patient's health.