Children's Healthcare of Atlanta Clinical Trial Dashboard

UX DESIGN & RESEARCH

Overview

Children's Healthcare of Atlanta is constantly testing new, better treatments to minimize the duration of their patients' stay as many patients that could have been sent home faster were kept in the hospital longer as a fail-safe procedure. Their challenge for us was to design a future hospital room that ensures comfort for patients and at the same time accommodates testing for new treatments.

This project was completed thanks to the combined efforts of all members of the Junior Health Design Studio. My role as part of the UX team was to design the dashboard interface that enables the clinical research team to monitor trials conducted in the hospital room.

Project Timeline
Jan - Apr 2020
15 weeks

Collaborating Department(s)
Georgia Institute of Technology
Children's Hospital of Atlanta

Supervisor
Prof Herb Velazquez

Role
UX Designer

Special Thanks to
Teammates - Jay Burnett, Seth Cruver, Angelique Dale, Eunhee Jung, Ramsey Lehman, Joel Loo, Piers Mrkusic, Julia Pokrzywa, Hannah Ranieri, Jereme Tan, Anna Teachout, Mia Tomblin
Clients - Dr Wilbur Lam, Dr Kiran Hebbar, Stephanie Meisner

THE CHALLENGE

How do we use data to validate and develop future best practices in Children's Healthcare of Atlanta?

THE SOLUTION

Increase accountability by aligning the clinical trial process between all stakeholders and visualize data to make loopholes more easily identifiable.

Track Progress

The UI allows the study team to keep track of each member's timeline and events. It also provides a form of documentation of the research process. From the calendar, users can zoom into a specific event and monitor room usage during that time.

Monitor Trials

The research team can easily observe different variables that affect clinical trials and how different parties move within the study environment.

They can toggle between different timestamps to identify potential loopholes in healthcare services.

Design Process

ABOUT THE CLIENT

Children's Healthcare of Atlanta

The Goal
Minimize the time their patients have to spend at the hospital ward

The Dilemma
Many patients could have been sent home faster but are kept in the hospital longer in case something goes wrong

The Task
They're testing new, better ways to treat patients and send them home faster

OUR CLIENT'S VISION

A smart, reconfigureable hospital room that can give patients home-like comfort, transform into an ER if needed, and accomodate clinical trials

DISCOVERY PHASE

Crash Course on Clinical Trials at the Hospital

Beginning of our user research
- Field Visit to Children's Healthcare of Atlanta
- Talked to physicians, nurses, clinical research director
- Observed different kinds of hospital room units
- Used data to draft clinical trial journey map

Understanding Users' Goals

Before identifying individual pain points, we mapped out all our stakeholders' goals as an organization. Our conceptual project was centralized around the directors' vision but of course, we had to consider all other influential stakeholders within the hospital.

Children's Healthcare of Atlanta's Goal
Minimize the time their patients have to spend at the hospital ward

Directors  →  Medical Director & Clinical Research Director
Ensure oversight and smooth operations of Children's Hospital of Atlanta

User Goals
Develop hospital best practices based on insights from physicians, nurses, and the research team

Healthcare Providers  →   Physicians & Nurses
Take care of patient needs, attend to emergency situations, build close relationships with the patients

User Goals
Administer best care and emotional support for patients, pass knowledge to next gen pediatricians

Research Team  →   Clinical Research Coordinators & Assistants
Gather data and information from the hospital for their research, test and evaluate results periodically

User Goals
Develop better treatments, test treatments and medications, collect data for future research

Journey Map

Based on our interviews, we conceptualized how the clinical trial process in the future transform-able hospital room would look like. We also consolidated some quotes from our interviewees that stood out.

Simulation Training in Hospitals

Emergency Response Practice
We learned that the care team routinely practice responding to emergencies by simulating these scenarios in various hospital room layouts.

Difficult Mirrored Room Layouts
Different room layouts impose a great cognitive load, for example, when they get used to one layout, it's difficult to perform the same routine in a mirrored room.

Feedback Reliant on Memory
When discussing what went well and what didn't post sim training, feedback given heavily relies on recall. How did that go? I think there was no space? We don't know.

Studied the Structure of Clinical Research Protocols

Duration - Frequency - Method Framework
Protocols can be 3 - 500 pages long and are organized by visits, which checklists for each visit.

Time Spent on Reporting

The inevitable documentation process
According to one of the pediatric nurses we interviewed, the care team spends pretty much half their time on computers (the other half treating patients)

Continuous process improvement
There's also many meetings, similar to how it goes post sim training. They take time to discuss what went right and wrong, and how the process can be improved.

Key Takeaways

Feedback Loop
Feedback loop between stakeholders is slow and heavily relies on memory

Validate procedure efficiency using more data (besides oral feedback)

Identification of Process Gaps
Disconnect between directors and care providers on how care is administered

Need to identify process gaps in order to come up with future best practices

Reporting
Large bulk of time spent on reporting or trying to remember things

Mechanism to collect all data to save time on reports and meetings

Concept
Refinement

Our clients valued the ability to map the room usage, which is why we decided to move forward with this heatmap room monitoring concept. They also mentioned they wanted to be able to integrate Epic, a healthcare database software they already use to import patient information.

The Value of
Feedback Loop

This concept fulfills the need to continuously improve not only their procedures, but also how they come up with better future procedures. As our client, Dr Wilbur Lam said, "A lot of solutions are great questions to test and validate...smart floors help in hypothesis testing."

Heatmap

Our visualization is based off of the future hospital room floor plan that was completed thanks to my teammates. From this layout we can show how people navigate within the hospital room and confounding variables, for instance, temperature.

Color Scale

In this concept, we use floor sensors to map out areas of high traffic, represented by a color scale as the nurses we interviewed had mentioned the importance of utilizing floor space during simulation training (and real procedures!)

Anonymity

One of our earlier concepts involved monitoring room usage using an unobtrusive camera embedded in the wall, however, there were concerns with privacy.

We looked into image encryption technology and its levels of obstruction, but in the end, we settled for the simple top down view where people are represented by circles on the heatmap.

Final Product

Let's connect.

If you'd like to chat about design, food, or anything, please feel free to reach out via email or shoot me a message on LinkedIn. Hope you enjoyed my work!