Vancouver Coastal Health administers 13 hospitals more than 500 facilities in British Columbia. Scott Bell, Zoe Hardisty and myself designed a system for front-line staff and management to analyze response times and audit data. Our team was selected by VCH through the Interaction Design program at Emily Carr University.
We collaborated on discovery to understand treatment of strokes and sepsis infections. We interviewed front-line staff and management to understand their environment and pain points. I created rapid prototypes using Axure RP to validate our hypotheses with staff and gain stakeholder confidence.
Rapid response times are critical for life threatening strokes and sepsis infections. Data for response times were being collected on paper, but they lacked resources for data entry and analysis. Patient flows required the collaboration of multiple facilities and departments, where a single delay could be life or death.
Through staff interviews and on-site research we concluded that a digital device would automate data entry and replace the neglected paper audits. A context aware digital entry lightened the cognitive load for busy front-line staff. The portable device allowed staff to enter the data where and when they needed.
Through iterations and staff collaborations we discovered that performance could be simplified into whether response times were hitting their targets. Staff could quickly analyze response times and understand what needed to be improved without complex analytics. Automatic notes were generated to integrate context – such as staff shortages and extreme weather conditions.
