Freeman Hospital: Patient Information in the Digital Age
The Brief:
Whilst the Freeman’s surgery is innovative, their patient information is old-fashioned and no longer fit for purpose Patients are usually given A4 booklets dense with text and staff are expected to run through the material with them to make sure they understand what is going to happen. This does not suit all patients, some of whom do not speak English as their first language, nor is it easy to share with their families, and is also very repetitive and time consuming for the clinical staffs.
The Challenge:
As a collaborative live project, design and prototype concepts that will improve the experience for all stakeholders from the patients, their relatives, clinicians and others who want to learn about the transplant service at the Freeman hospital. The solution is anticipated to be predominantly digital for ease of access and updating. However, for those who prefer printed information this be available in a concise and friendly format too.
Research & Development
We spent our first week doing primary research such as online research, interviewing clinical staffs and patients. To support us on analysing any common responses, feedbacks, threats and experiences, we referred back to our interview and observations to map out any valuable points gained from each of the patients and their family members/ friends.
As the interviews covered a few areas such as their personal journey in transplantation, being hospitalised, being given a transplantation booklet, going through assessment tests, waiting lists, operations, etc., we had a good overview of what the patients have to say about their overall journey as a lung or heart transplant patient.
After mapping out the main points, we found out there were common themes found. We then further analysed the mind map and pinpointed the common themes mentioned and experienced by the patients. Putting the project’s brief at heart, we thought that ‘experience’ would be the main theme. This then branches out to our 3 main focus, information, support and platform. We sorted and categorised the highlighted words from our previous mind map and listed them into the themes. This is so that we could have a better view of our main considerations.
User Persona.
One of our persona was based on a patient we interviewed. The patient shared her experience throughout her hospital journey, including her thoughts about the physical booklet given by the clinical staffs. We created a user profile showing her situation, frustrations, behaviors and familiarity on technology and goals.
User Journey.
The above shows the patient’s journey from the clinical briefing session to when the physical booklet has been received. This gave us a better understanding on the user flow.
From our research, we listed out the 6 main considerations that influences the patient’s experience in accessing to the information they need.
The core values of our project is to ensure the platform provides efficiency in information, context, accessibility, understanding, personalisation and suit to users’ different learning styles.
We generated a few ideas revolving the core values.
We did a critical analysis on each of the ideas regarding its positives and drawbacks to pick out the concept that suits our users the most.
The Concept
We generated a few ideas revolving the core values. We did a critical analysis on each of the ideas regarding its positives and drawbacks to pick out the concept that suits our users the most.
We decided that a website is the most suitable platform. A website is more flexible as it could map to a user’s needs such as language, preferences, learning styles, etc. As for the context and information, this platform provides 24/7 support to users who have any enquiries or questions about transplantation. It saves both the coordinator and patients’ time on having to go through a brief about the information and they could dive in to a more personal session like Q&A. Contents could also be shared and updated easily.
/Website’s Sitemap.
/Service Blueprint.
/UI Mood Board.
/User Testing.