How might we prototype conversation support for COPD patients and their healthcare team during transitions from
the hospital to home?
This project was with the COPD Wellness Committee to improve COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disorder) care at the Institute of Healthcare Delivery Design for UI health.
The aim of this project during the Summer2019 was to help the Committee identify the different problems happening across silos in the care system and make them visible to further create an opportunity map for them.
During the Fall, I was hired as a design researcher/communication design strategist by UI health and the Respiratory Health Association (RHA) to create an in-patient medication education and symptom recognition tool for COPD patients for a better hospital-to-home transition.
PHASE 1: PROJECT PLANNING
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The overall project can be separated into 2 phrases. Over the summer, the initial team interviewed 4 different clinicians to understand how COPD care works at UI Health. By supplemented the research with a workshop of 10 clinicians to unpack the details of workflow, and a hospital tour to understand how the physical environment and facilities might come into play. One key learning from these early activities was that hospital-to-home transitions have to extend out from the moment of discharge to be successful-they need to look upstream into the hospital treatment process and downstream into outpatient settings.
When Tae and I joined the team in fall, we were expected to be responsive to the initial learnings from the summer. As a new team with 3 international students who had limited understanding of the healthcare system in the US, we have been able to broaden the iterative testing beyond the moment of discharge and repeatedly engaged both inpatient and outpatient stakeholders. This included shadowing inpatient respiratory therapists and pharmacists, and outpatient pulmonary clinicians; and conducting prototype reviews with inpatient and outpatient clinicians.
STAKEHOLDERS ENGAGEMENT
A quick overview of the amount of practitioners my team
has been engaged with.
PHASE 2: RESEARCH LEARNINGS
3 gaps in COPD patient service.
Through initial research, we considered the 2nd one was an opportunity area.
Current Educational Materials Being Used In UI Health
(Acceptable Reading Grade Ranges From 3-5)
Lack of coherent educational materials during the transition from hospital to home is a nationwide problem, which causes COPD patients, especially those with limited treatment experiences, to pay less attention to the value&importance of the follow-up visit within 2 weeks of their hospital discharge. Furthermore, this behavior causes patients to revisit the emergency room frequently, and require limited hospital resources.
PHASE 2: REFRAME THE CHALLENGE
Using MERIT Framework to generate design principles
Based on our research learnings, the team came up with 3 design principles
that set up as a baseline for the features on the deliverables.
Design principles branched out to the need statement to inform our decision-making, this is our guiding piece.
Challenges:
With several challenges ahead of us, the key challenge is to work with healthcare practitioners' schedules and don't waste their valuable time. So instead of traditional methods focus on the interview and focus group, we use another approach-participatory qualitative research, where instead of doing a lengthy discovery process which is useful when not much is known, we would leverage what we’ve learned on similar projects for other conditions and health systems to form a going in hypothesis, and then continually refine it with stakeholder input to reach the final project.
6 activities for a “flipped” design process
PHASE 3: DELIVERABLES
Key features
Scenario
Outcome:
As uncovered from research and prototype testing, these communication tools are the first step in a system of solutions.
At the end of the project, our team proposed and presented the discharge tools and research insights to the UIC Health system and RHA board members, the tools had potential impacts on 8,700 diagnosed COPD patients in the south-west side of Chicago.
Patient Journey
SPECIAL THANKS TO A WONDERFUL TEAM:
Co-created By Institute of Design Research Team:
Kyungtae Kim, Tanvi Ranka, Xuning Guo
Guidance By UI Health Advisors:
Jenny Sculley, Kim Erwin
