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Problem Statement

  • In the chaotic emergency care environment, patients are being admitted haphazardly and staff members must make snap judgement about patient treatment. Doctors, nurses and other members of the hospital staff need an efficient way to keep track of patients coming into and going out of the medical care units. They also need to keep track of patient medical status, interventions performed, and note which members of the staff are responsible for which patients. A common medium for information management in this fast-paced environment is a simple marker and white board, which doctors and nurses share to keep track of this large and complex network of information.
  • While the whiteboard does score high on the efficiency and learnability scale, it is a dismally unsafe and prone to all kinds of error including lapses, mistakes, poor form, smudging, etc. For an institution who's goal it is to provide care, the dismal safety score of the whiteboard merits a revamped user interface design.
  • Several institutions employ existing medical information management platforms, but clinical staff often describe these tools as "cumbersome", "inefficient" and "annoying", and often simply use the white boards instead.

Target User Goals

  • Doctors and nurses: 
    • Need to manage patient information cleanly, and safely without negatively impacting their operational efficiently
    • Want to Prioritize care to the most needy patients
    • Want to be able to easily access the content in the system
    • Would like to update patients status as quickly as possible
  • Hospital staff: 
    • Track the procedures performed on patients for billing purposes
    • Contacting family members
    • Minimize hospital costs and maximize patient throughput  
    • Would like to be updated about patient status as quickly as possible

Target User Obstacles

  • Doctors and Nurses:
    • Very little time or dedication to learning new interface designs.
    • Existing platform is highly error prone, and can be difficult to discern
    • Existing platform is cumbersome and information is not easily transmitted. This can lead to a latency issue where information is not updated frequently enough.   
  •  Hospital Staff:
    • Have difficulty understanding "Jargon" of the clinical staff, and layout of the information on the white boards
    • Are not informed of updates in status without rechecking the board, which is itself prone to latency issues.

GR 1 - Analysis

GR1

  • Group members
    • Mohammad M. Ghassemi
    • Robin Deits
    • Kamran Khan
    • Franck Dernoncourt
  • Obstacles lie in the way:
    • Poor IT skills among hospital employees
    • Patient Privacy
    • Hospital's employees are very busy
  • Observations & Interviews. Give a narrative of the three people that you observed and interviewed. Each narrative should include a particularly interesting moment -- a breakdown or workaround that exhibits a feature of the problem you're aiming to solve.
    • Interview 1:
    • Interview 2:
    • Interview 3:
  • User Classes. 
    • Doctors
      • Busy, want easy access to pertinent patient information such as location, medical status, previous interventions and a visual.
    • Nurses
      • High workload, responsible for updating notes on vital signs and want a system that easily allows them to modify information on patients efficiently.
    • Administrative Assistants
      • Need accurate detail, responsible for billing. Need to know which nurse and doctor are responsible for which patients.
    • Paramedics
      •  
  • Needs & Goals. Describe the goals that you have identified, with reference to the observations you made.** 
    • Fill Me in 

Illustrations:

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