UX Design / Product Design
Individual Project
Sponsor CHARING CROSS HOSPITAL(UK)
01.2019 - 06.2019
Non-clinical staffs play a key role in patient experience, but they are undervalued.
FaceCare is a workforce management platform for the support team that improve their efficiency and empower them to stay connected, fulfil their passions as well as help them deliver exceptional care to patients.
In hospitals to treat and/or heal patients in a successful way is not only a matter of a good diagnosis and the right medical treatment or procedure performed by specialists doctors and nurses. Non-clinical staffs are caregivers that play a fundamental role in healthcare organisations because they have more frequent and direct interactions with the patients during the most critical moments of their treatment in the hospital.
From the diagnosis and monitoring of any disease or medical condition, to the recovery phase after surgery or medical procedures - and even until the patient discharge, support teams are expected to prepare, accompany and transport patients within the hospital facilities. These moments are probably when patients feel more vulnerable, unprotected and exposed and for this very reason, when their perception of the experience during the hospital stay can be affected in a good or a bad way.
Core insights and opportunities included three areas: user experience, efficiency and labour rights.
How to improve efficiency and balance labour rights to fulfil the needs from patients and actor in the hospital?
Face-care considers support staff as the main actor of the service -and backstage as the main environment- since they are responsible for the care of the patients when transporting them. Face-care translates existing tacit knowledge and communication codes of the support team into tangible low-cost tools and technologies for transmitting significant and accurate information to make evident.
Give porter feeling of valued and supported by providing a low cost smart badge:
I did validation test with 2 nurses, 1 doctor, 1 superviser of porters, and 2 porters. Manger and doctors who stand by hospital and NHS would like to buy in the IoT system. They agreed that it apparently improve efficiency. In the mean time, porters don’t want to be tracked.
However, after iteration with adding the function of fatigue sensor, porters working motivation apparently improved. And one of the younger porter manager emphasised if this function won’t reduce the efficiency overall, he would like to try it.
“I would like to try the system. I’ve tried a lot porters’ systems before, but this system sounds the most intelligent and efficient.” — James, Porter Manager
“I wish I could work for hospital like nurse or doctor ‘cause they have more agency to choose what they want to do. But if I can, I think this job is not nightmare anymore, seriously.” — Jian, A&E Porter
“Now we can give priority to the patient itself than finding the available equipment. This new system allows each responsible caregiver to do so, in this service, because usually in Ultrasound Images they only ask for the patient transportation and request the transfer documents, without even looking or checking the patient.” — Galio, Support Staff.
I received advice from healthcare professionals at each stage of the project. From paramedics, clinical staff, hospital managers and non-clinical staffs - they were all vital in the development of the FaceCare.