Healthcare

Predictive Patient Treatment

Insights & Takeaways

Experience design considers the entire patient journey, physical and digital, before, during, and after the engagement process. This allows process simplification for providers and patients.
Engagement is empathetic and caring and connecting with people emotionally, at every stage allows understanding how they feel, their frustrations and pain points.
It is important to identify all the key players responsible during various touchpoints in the patient’s journey to form a cross-functional working group and resolve these issues.
Identifying all important personas internal and external who represent or are in some way connected with the the existing patient-base represent opportunities for change and growth.

Overview

Considering the current sub optimal state of provider and patient experience and high costs of healthcare, we focused on understanding pain points and create a holistic experience for patients, physicians, healthcare providers and insurance companies.

“Human Centered Design as a driver for Patient Experience allows it to thrive.”

Challenge

Physicians in ICU’s use multiple scoring systems to calculate the patient’s severity classification, mortality probability models etc. Based on the protocols followed in ICU’s, physicians utilize these scoring systems on a regular basis. These tools however were not created to manage patients in the ICU. While they pose their own challenges over time, these models have proved to decrease hospital costs. Detailed research and interviews with physicians who work in the ICU indicated the complexities, challenges, limitations and application of such scoring models. Human Centered research studies revealed the technology challenges faced by physicians related to data entry and use of computers. So despite all the known benefits of scoring models, the Data Extraction Burden and challenges to record over 100 different variables to calculate scores roughly 4 times during a stay per patient and regular updates required to keep the model up to date often shadows the benefits and practicality of using these scores consistently despite all the benefits it can offer.

Outcome

With a focus on providing healthcare providers with the power of data, we analyzed and understood how scoring systems work for critical care and emergency physicians.

There are multiple scoring systems commonly used:
APACHE II
SAPS II
MODS
SOFA
LODS
MPM II on admission, 24 h, 48 h, 72 h
ODIN
TRIOS
Glasgow coma score (GCS)

We designed a web based system that was extremely easy to use and provided the flexibility to define various formulas and update them over time. The system keeps detailed history of patient visits and scores. By classifying and mining data with similar patterns, it allows comparison of patients with similar variables and predicts best treatment paths for more favorable outcomes. It is also built with capabilities to provide real time alerts and notifications during the patients ICU stay so that physicians and support staff are well informed and empowered with improved patient data. Given the operational challenges in an ICU, it is not practically possible for physicians to apply each of these scoring systems no matter what the merits, demerits or how comparable each of these models are. We provided an easy to understand visualization and score presentation interface allowing Physicians and staff to compare scores from multiple systems. As these scoring models are not used for patient management, we eliminated the use of sensitive patient specific data hence making it easy to implement.

Days 1-30

Persona Identification, Feasibility Studies, User Interviews

The primary focus was on Critical Care and Emergency physicians to gain understanding of how scoring systems work, when and why they use it in patient care. Contextual observation, interviews and feedback sessions were conducted to gain better understanding of complexities, shortcomings and challenges. Patient health record systems, potential integrations, data storage and access and security were assessed.

Days 31-60

Analysis & Synthesis, Experience Mapping, Ideation

With the focus on the patient, their well being, security and privacy, researchers, designers and technologists started envisioning the future state. The future state and data obtained from the research were translated into creative ideas, story boards, scenarios and mock ups.

Days 61-90

Design System, Prototypes and Proof of Concept

Fully interactive high fidelity prototypes that envisioned the new application were created iteratively with user feedback considering integrations, ease of use and adoption. A development roadmap with essential features and a plan for release of the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) was created and development efforts were initiated.

Next Project

Integrated approach to Customer Experience