Role
Product Design
Duration
24 hours
Methods
Design Sprint, Visual Design, User Interviews, User Flows, Prototyping
Teammates
Shireen Saini
Rosanna Liu
Outreach
Outreach is a tablet application that helps health care providers check in new patients seamlessly so that they can spend more time with their patients during the COVID-19 crisis.
Context
Early this year, we were hit with a global pandemic that many foresaw but none were ready for. The spread of COVID-19 devastated hospitals all over the world with overcrowding or simply not having enough space for all the patients that needed immediate care and hospital beds. To avoid the spread of the virus, patients were needed to be separated depending on if they are COVID positive or negative.
“ ..how can we ensure that health care professionals spend more time on COVID patients and less time on paperwork?”
Final Solution
Research and Design
We started our process by conducting some simple secondary research. We got together to list out basic pain points and other themes relevant to the COVID-19 testing process.
primary resource: https://oig.hhs.gov/oei/reports/oei-06-20-00300.pdf
Initial brainstorm and research of possible pain points
What our users had to say
Due to time constraints, we were only able to interview 2 health care professionals. One was a nurse at Kaiser Permanente and a Healthcare Practitioner at the Evergreen Hospital.
01 Segregation
Patients are separated by COVID and non COVID patients, which means that some can get redirected.
02 Test
People who take the COIVD test will only receive a call if they test positive, although 70-80% of the people still call back to check for results.
03 Communication
Most nurses will connect with their patients over phone calls even if a portal is available. This is because many non tech savvy people tend to struggle with these portals.
Interview with a nurse at Kaiser Permanente
Interview with a health care practitioner at the Evergreen Hospital
Original User Flow
Final User Flow
We went through two iterations of our user flow, drastically cutting down the steps needed in the final solution. We did this because we wanted to make sure our user was still able to spend as much time with patients as on an iPad. We wanted our users to be able to guide themselves through this application without having to be too overwhelmed over too many steps while also juggling the chaotic environment of the hospital.
We identified 3 main steps: easy check-in, communicating with patients and other doctors, and lastly assigning rooms.
We also decided to move forward with the assumption that all of the patients coming in had been tested for COVID - 19 for our design.
Wireframes
We split up ideating screen UI, and I was responsible for the check-in as well as the UI for assigning rooms. We were all able to critique each other’s ideas to come up with a cohesive design.
Key Features
01 Scan ID
The check-in function scans and records patient information and matches it to their patient medical records on EMR. This expedites the check-in process and avoids errors that occur in manual entry.
02 Easy Check-In
The nurse is then prompted to select the patient’s current symptoms and underlying illnesses to complete the patient profile and check-in process.
03 Patient Profile
Easily access patient records and history from EMR. View their status, personal details, symptoms, and medical history.
04 Assign Rooms
When tasked to assign rooms, the nurse is shown the patient’s result for COVID and other illnesses to determine their placement. They can quickly assign them to a room that correlates to their illness.
05 Messaging
Easily contact patients and doctors using the messaging function.
Prompts like “How are you doing?” “Are you okay?” help expedite the messaging process so you can talk to more of your patients.
Quickly contact your patient’s emergency contact to keep them in the loop.
Looking to the Future
If we had more time, we would have conducted many usability tests to offer up more insight into our design. Another thing my team and I would like to do is create an app that is patient-facing which can collaborate and coordinate with the healthcare professional’s side of the app. This would help to create a level of cohesiveness and better communication. Some features we would consider: Easily accessible reports, contacting family members, and a map to direct patients where to find their way inside the hospital.