The Challenge: Data Accessibility for a Virtual Health Innovator
Our client, a Midwest-based provider, has pioneered many facets of virtual healthcare, including providing patients with internet-enabled devices to record and monitor vital signs remotely. These devices are essential for patients with chronic conditions such as diabetes, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and congestive heart failure that require frequent patient monitoring and check-ins with healthcare professionals.
Patients with these conditions are segmented into groups and monitored by a team of providers, including a nurse practitioner, advanced practitioner, and navigator. Each provider team oversees its group to monitor key vitals, determine if intervention is needed for any individual patient, and prioritize intervention to help the most critical patients first.
The existing system provided electronic data to the monitoring teams, but it was not user-friendly, consistent, or coordinated across teams. There were also some critical obstacles to each team being able to accurately and quickly triage patients who needed intervention. Repetitive manual processes and non-consolidated patient views slowed down assessment. Providers could only see one patient record at a time, limiting the larger picture of the overall group to show who needed help most urgently. The team also needed to know if any vitals entries were missed, and with the constraints of the existing application, this information was tracked manually on paper to monitor for any needed intervention.
Our Process: Human-Centered Design Agile
The healthcare provider partnered with 1904labs to help resolve these issues. Leveraging our Human-Centered Design Agile process, we brought all key stakeholders - from programmers and designers to the provider teams - together to have the right feedback and perspectives to build the right solution. These collaborative sessions, which continued weekly throughout the project, helped refine the solution to truly fit the needs of all users and be impactful on the experience of their end patients.
The Solution: An All-In One Display
With the new solution, provider teams have a desktop app to oversee each patient group (sometimes including as many as 100 patients) in a single glance. Manual and paper-based processes to track missed daily vital entries have been eliminated, increasing speed and reducing error. In one view, the providers now had all of the information they needed to quickly assess their patient groups and triage any needed intervention.
The Outcomes: Better Patient Care
Previously, it took the providers 18 clicks to see a patient’s full record. Now, it takes just one. This increased efficiency enables provider teams to help critical patients faster. Providers can also customize the order of their list of alerts and modify each patient’s specific alert range, eliminating false alarms for alerts like high blood pressure when that’s in the patient’s normal range. Within that same screen, providers can chat with patients through text and video. The text conversation history is viewable by all providers, ensuring smoother hand-offs and collaboration. Educational materials can be provided to patients from a library of videos and documents as well as from the wider internet. Onboarding patients was also streamlined by providing a simpler device syncing workflow.
In addition to the functionality, the client now has a scalable cloud-based platform built on Google Cloud Platform, chosen for its compliance with HIPAA regulations, which allows them to keep pace with growth and continue to increase the amount of patients they serve.
“It improves satisfaction and efficiency on the job and certainly will improve the quality of care we can offer.”
Nurse and new user Virtual Care Provider
