Reducing hospital mortality rates through information design

Objective

Improve intensive care unit (ICU) standards by redesigning the way patient information is recorded, displayed and shared.

Success metrics

Reduced patient mortality rates across several hospital ICUs. Quicker and more accurate medical diagnoses.

Process

    1: Observe
    
Quietly shadow users in their working environment; observing medical staff as they carry out their roles. Interview them after their shift. Record as many insights as possible.    
  
    2: Distill
    Consolidate all insights, grouping similar ones into topics. Summarise each key topic and deliver as a simplified list in user story formatting.
  
    3: Prioritise
    Host a prioritisation workshop with users and stakeholders. Allow attendees to vote for stories. Limit votes to ensure people only choose the stories they value most. Reorder stories by total number of votes received.
  
    4: Concept
    Host a sketching & ideation workshop. Invite attendees to draw as many solutions as possible in a narrow timeframe. Review and critique each idea, select the best, make improvements, critique again and repeat a few times.
  
    5: Prototype
    Develop the best ideas from the sketching & ideation workshop into a prototype. The prototype should be interactive and resemble the intended end product as closely as possible, within reason.
  
    6: Test
    Carry out user testing sessions. Ask users to carry out certain tasks using the interactive prototype. Observe their workflow and identify friction points. Also invite users to provide qualitative feedback on their experience.

“Draw, Build, Test, Repeat”

Products that focus on continuous improvement stay relevant for longer. Launch day isn’t the end of the project - it’s the beginning of a new phase of R&D. Always stay ahead by testing, improving and updating your product.

Project details

Royal London Hospital wanted to improve patient care in its intensive care unit (ICU). The hospital asked me to come up with a solution to tackle this issue. I spent a day observing how medical staff worked together and cared for their ICU patients. Making detailed notes including physical area maps and equipment documenting, I spotted opportunities for improvement in the way patient data was handed over between colleagues.

Much data was recorded on paper, which posed risks such as information loss, damage, misinterpretation or leakage. I collaborated with doctors, the other UX designer, visual designers and software developers to come up with a network-based, dual screen solution that eliminated the need for paper notes and helped display critical patient information in an easy-to-read format.