Background
Telehealth refers to any medical activity conducted remotely through an electronic communication system, such as medical video conferencing or remote heart monitoring. The healthcare industry has long been at the forefront of technological advancements, which have enhanced nursing practices, improved efficiency, and increased patient safety. However, these advancements have also placed greater demands on nurses, expanding their daily responsibilities to include more data analysis in their workflows
This project, conducted in collaboration with Philips Healthcare and supported by Norrlands Universitetssjukhus, explores the design of a telehealth collaboration tool to alleviate this burden. The ultimate goal is to reclaim human-to-human care time by redistributing nurses’ analytical responsibilities between bedside nurses and their remote telehealth colleagues
Visual Hands
Location
Umeå, Sweden
Time
Nov, 2024
Role
Interaction Designer
Telehealth enables remote medical activities through electronic communication, from video consultations to heart monitoring. As healthcare advances, patient complexity increases, adding strain on nurses who must integrate more data analysis into their workflow. This project, in collaboration with Philips Healthcare and Norrlands Universitetssjukhus (NUS), explores a telehealth collaboration tool to ease this burden. The goal is to enhance teamwork between bedside and remote nurses, allowing more time for direct patient care
Using interviews, observations, and body storming, the team designed a system that fosters trust in bedside-remote nurse collaboration. Key features include a dynamic card system that prioritizes patients based on criticality and a communication log for real-time and asynchronous messaging. While telehealth improves efficiency and patient safety, it also raises concerns about trust. Ensuring clear, effective communication between telehealth and bedside nurses is essential to maintaining confidence in remote healthcare
Patient Monitoring
Telehealth Growth
Telehealth Centers
Better Communication
Research
Field Research
We conducted on-site research at Norrlands Universitetssjukhus, closely observing the ICU, postoperative, and pediatric wards while interviewing relevant nursing staff. Additionally, during the early research phase, we consulted Dr. Sofie Lyhammar, a telemedicine expert and strong advocate for the expansion of telehealth services. She has established a hybrid role, working remotely from Stockholm while supporting a small hometown hospital. Based on these insights, we decided to focus our project on the postoperative ward
Story Organization
By organizing the research and interview findings into individual stories, we identified recurring patterns and structured them into meaningful insights. Based on these patterns, we selected the most compelling story to create a simulated scenario. Using the body-storming method, we reenacted the postoperative journey of a patient and two nurses, exploring the connections between stories and identifying key touchpoints
Ideation
Crazy Eight and Brainwriting
Based on the theme of "trust" and the story framework, we conducted multiple brainstorming sessions.
Workflow Mapping and Journey Map
Designing and integrating the workflow of telehealth nurses based on existing healthcare procedures.
After a series of studies, we decided to focus the project on building trust between bedside nurses and telehealth nurses, particularly in relation to the introduction of automation, new workflows, and emerging medical technologies in the healthcare environment.
Collaboration system
We believe in looking at the collaboration not as one helping the other, but rather as one telehealth team. The patient and telehealth nurse will never directly communicate with each other, except with data that goes to the telehealth nurse through the monitor, the patient and bedside nurse communicate closely, and and bedside nurse communicate sporadically to collaborate on giving the best care to the patient.
iteration
The project initially aimed to incorporate three main features: monitoring, communication, and AI analysis. However, after discussions with Philips representatives, the focus shifted to the key question:
How do the Telehealth nurse and Bedside nurse communicate with each other?
Concept
The team developed a system that supports bedside-remote nurse collaboration based on trust. Key design features include a dynamic card system that visually prioritizes patients based on criticality, and a communication log that integrates both real-time and asynchronous messaging.
How might we design a system that builds trust for telehealth collaboration, equipping telehealth nurses with tools to enable bedside nurses to prioritize human presence?
Result
The main features we kept working with was Dynamic Cards, Sensing the other side and genereal communication between Telehealth Nurses & Bedside Nurses, the final concept includes interface design for both the Telehealth's nurses central unit and the Bedside Monitor
Dynamic cards
