Patient Plus

  • Event

    DubsTech Protothon,
    the online UX Hackathon

  • Timeline

    24 hours

  • Role

    Art direction, UX design, UI design

  • Partners

    Ryan Ali, Thedora Karatzas,
    and Jay-Kwon Park

  • Tools

    Figma, Adobe Illustrator

Introduction

PatientPlus is an Electronic medical record (EMR) that allows patients to pre-screen and access resources associated with COVID-19 and gives healthcare providers the ability to seamlessly check medical history and labs while safely managing patient flow and room assignments.

Prompt

With the coronavirus pandemic, hospitals are facing a rapid influx of patients coming in to be identified, isolated, tested, or admitted for COVID-19. This has led cities and hospitals to create external testing setups and temporary hospital-like camps to accommodate for this massive influx of patients. Due to this overflow, front-line workers (doctors, nurses, assistants, etc.), are inevitably spending more time on paperwork which is costing them an unnecessary amount of time and hindering them from providing enough care to their patients.

Our task was to design a mobile or tablet (preferred) application that allows nurses to seamlessly check-in new patients and communicate with patients, care providers, and rooms so there’s more time for patients and less paperwork.

Process!

To better understand what the process were for both sides (patient and heath care professionals), we started a documentation of the steps needed for a patient to get tested.

With these steps we were able to see the goals of each user, create user journeys, and see where we could consolidate steps for a quicker process.

User Goals and Journey

  • Patient

    • Help patients figure out if they should be tested

    • Reduce physical contact or interactions between medical staff and patients

    • Help care providers manage patient flow during hospital visit

    • Minimize time for pre-test procedures

  • Health Care Professional

    • Check-in new patients quickly

    • Have an overview of the status of rooms

    • Manage paperwork and time

“How do we help connect patients and medical personnel to facilitate verification, care assessment, and information distribution?”

Patient Plus

Healthcare systems are overwhelmed in the current pandemic and interacting with patients can pose health and safety issues for workers lacking access to proper PPE.

PatientPlus allows patients to screen themselves and do pre-work, and prepares healthcare professionals to quickly screen and care for incoming patients.

Key Features

Dashboard

PATIENT VIEW

  • Check symptoms at home to assess risk 

  • Find testing locations nearby and wait times

  • “Next steps” catered to each patient to reduce waiting time at the clinic

  • Easy-to-access news regarding COVID-19

  • Personal profile

Search

PATIENT VIEW

  • Search for facilities to get tested

  • Directions to destination

  • Information on facility (available testing options)

  • Estimated wait time

Calendar

HEALTH CARE PROFESSIONAL VIEW

  • Color-coded calendar to see appointments for the day

  • Appointment details

  • Patient details

Room Status

HEALTH CARE PROFESSIONAL VIEW

  • Color-coded to see room status

  • Room information including patient, doctor, status

Additional Pages

Feedback

The Good

  • Solves the problem at its source

  • Allows the patients to be in control of their health

  • Reduces the bottleneck of patients by eliminating the majority of people from the pool, reducing contact, and the spread of the virus

Changes to Consider

  • Patient view too complex

  • Focus on promoting the symptom checker bot to eliminate questions and concerns and get people out of the medical queue

  • Push on the concept of a traditional calendar for something that focuses more on immediate appointments

  • Consider a landscape orientation for health care workers

  • Consider a phone app for patients

Next Steps

Due to the 24-hour time constraint, I aspired to develop a comprehensive application prototype for user testing, aimed at uncovering pain points for both patients and healthcare workers. An extended timeline would have facilitated the creation of detailed branding and style guidelines for design cohesion among the team. I also would have shifted more focus on accessibility, recognizing the need to move beyond color-based options to ensure an inclusive user experience.