Hospital Tracking Application
Role: Creative Direction, UI/UX Design, UX Research
Team: krumware & Earth Technology Integration
Customer: SC DHEC & State of South Carolina Emergency Management Division
Timeframe: November 2017-March 2018
Synopsis/Abstract
South Carolina had an outdated system to track Hospital bed, equipment, and contacts across the state that created numerous obstacles to getting regular and accurate bed count update numbers. I worked with South Carolina’s Emergency Management Division (SCEMD), Department of Health and Environmental Control (DHEC), the South Carolina Hospital Association (SCHA), and hospital employees to design an application that catered to their needs and sees consistent and regular bed count updates during both “blue sky days” and emergency scenarios.
Problem
Decision-makers at the state level were unable to get Hospitals to consistently update bed counts when needed, making aiding or even evacuating during an emergency extremely challenging (SC had four full coastal evacuations for hurricanes during my time working in this system).
Goals
Design a secure, modern application for hospitals to effortlessly update their bed count numbers. Specifically:
Create an easy, reliable way for hospital users to update the most important metric, their bed count numbers
Find a way for end-users to update numbers without use of poor practices like “multi-user accounts”
Process
Research
In late 2017 I began initial talks with representatives from several state medical agencies to discuss problems and limitations of DHEC’s existing Hospital reporting system, SMARTT (State Medical Asset Resource Tracking Tool). We held an initial focus group in late January 2018 that reinforced a number of findings we had internally discussed as potential pain points (listed above in the Problems section).
After this initial focus group, I worked with Rudra and Phil, our liaison at ETI communicating with these state agencies, to build a list of requirements that included:
General hospital details
Bed counts by type per hospital
Equipment count per hospital
Managing contacts per hospital (whom hospital blast emails sent to)
Sending “blast” emails (instead of problematic full user accounts for hospital users).
This allowed DHEC admin to send mass emails to all hospitals alerting them to update their bed count numbers via token credentials to no longer require user accounts.
Explorations
After we agreed on the requirements with our stakeholders, I wireframed user flows on hospital data relationships and blast messages to communicate and gain feedback from our engineering team on technical considerations. Once patterns were solidified, I designed high fidelity mockups to communicate UI specifics for some new components within our design system. Less than a month after our initial focus group, our engineering team released the initial application to the SCEMD ecosystem (Palmetto EOC) for a group of beta users to begin testing and interacting with this new product.
Validation
We rolled out the initial product to a beta set of users and stakeholders we worked with in our focus group in on a test database for some initial feedback. Hospital users were thrilled to see no credentials required, as this allowed them to swiftly enter their numbers, then get back to their job. Previously this password reset process could take up to an hour for emails to send, which lead to low bed count numbers reported within 48h (Have a number here??). Within months we validated and designed updates for messaging, bed/equipment count updates, as well as other reporting capabilities.
Outcome/Success
We went from kickoff focus groups to our beta release in under 45 days for an application that had to meet the basic functionality of their old system in order to support these state agencies transitioning towards our product. This swift rollout in order to get quick feedback is an indicator of careful scoping and sprint planning on our product management end.
During real world situations, like the COVID-19 pandemic, 94% of Acute Care Hospitals report their bed count within 48 hours of email blast.
Change of product structure utilizing email blast & web forms reduced all need for password resets from hospital users, significantly reducing user frustration and tech support needed.
Decreased password resets from (xx) per (yy time frame: week, etc) to zero by restructuring data entry mechanism for hospital users.
Decreased average time to enter hospital bed count from x to y (or by z%)
Hospitals application still utilized by State & Hospital users on weekly basis over 2 years after release
If you have any quotes from the client about “this project saves me hours a week,” or “we no longer have x problem now,” I think that’d be valid, too.
Contributions/Acknowledgements
Phil & Rob at ETI
Colin & Rudra at krumware
Eric at DHEC
Melissa P at SCEMD
SC Hospital Association members
