The flow of information regarding patient records is a bottle neck in many hospitals. The limitations of physical charts as well as poor implementations of digital databases are to blame. With President Obama’s 2009 mandate that all medical records become electronic within 5 years, this is a problem that deserves a lot of attention and has heavy financial incentives to back it up.

As hospitals seek to upgrade their current systems to it is worth noting that most devices used in the hospitals for patient care offer suboptimal solutions to these kinds of important problems. This stems from the fact that the end users of these systems (medical practitioners) are often not the same as the purchasers of them (hospital administration and insurance companies). The result is ugly devices with poor interactions and outdated technology.

OPPORTUNITY

PHASE 1: RESEARCH

Develop understanding of current systems

Develop understanding of users

Create a set up personas and use cases

Create tentpole list of features (IxD & ID)

PHASE 2: DEVELOPMENT

Develop workflow

Develop 3 ID concepts

Develop 3 UI concepts

Design supplementary interfaces

PHASE 3: REFINEMENT

Create CAD model and renderings

Create a physical model

PHASE 4: PRESENTATION

Prepare Print Material

Compile future use video

GOALS

OBJECTIVE

For my project I will be exploring opportunities for improving the flow of information among medical practitioners.

PROJECT MANAGEMENT

These goals will be realized through diligent work and meticulous documentation and organization along the way. I will post my progress at least once per week to my Tumblr blog. Bi-weekly classes will act as routine “check-ins” to make sure I am on task and that things are running on schedule.

DELIVERABLES

A minimum of one physical mock-up

A set of accompanying device UI mock-ups

A set of supplementary UI mock-ups

A presentation of my research and process

A future use video of the system

SOLUTION