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 patient complexity grows, nurses face more data challenges. Collaborating with Philips Healthcare and NUS, we designed a tool to support teamwork between bedside and remote nurses, featuring patient prioritization and communication log. The system aims to build trust and improve communication for better patient care.
Background
Shared tasks, trusted hands
Telehealth enables remote medical care through tools like video calls and heart monitoring. While technology has improved nursing efficiency and patient safety, it also increases nurses’ responsibilities, especially in data analysis. In collaboration with Philips Healthcare and Norrlands Universitetssjukhus, this project explores a telehealth tool that supports collaboration between bedside and remote nurses, aiming to ease workload and restore time for direct patient care
Patient Monitoring
Telehealth Growth
Telehealth Centers
Better Communication
Research
A focused exploration shaped by on-site evidence
Field Research
We conducted on-site research at Norrlands Universitetssjukhus, observing ICU, postoperative, and pediatric wards, and interviewing nursing staff. In the early phase, we also consulted Dr. Sofie Lyhammar, a telemedicine expert working remotely to support a local hospital. Based on these insights, we chose to focus on the postoperative ward
Story Organization
We organized research and interviews into individual stories to find recurring patterns and insights. From these, we created a simulated scenario based on a key story. Using body-storming, we reenacted the postoperative journey of a patient and two nurses to explore connections and identify key touchpoints
Ideation
Together as one team
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.
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.
Collaboration system
We view collaboration as one unified telehealth team, not one side helping the other. The patient and telehealth nurse don’t communicate directly—only through data from the bedside monitor. The bedside nurse stays in close contact with the patient and collaborates with the telehealth nurse as needed to ensure quality care
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?
Solution
Prioritizing human care through trusted telehealth
The team designed a system to support trust-based collaboration between bedside and remote nurses, featuring dynamic cards to prioritize patients and a communication log for real-time and async messaging.
With features that foster trust and streamline communication, we arrived at the question: 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?
The dynamic card layout adjusts to patient criticality, showing fewer detailed cards for critical cases or more compact cards for stable patients, allowing flexible monitoring.
Details
The final concept includes interfaces for both telehealth and bedside nurses, focusing on dynamic cards, mutual awareness, and streamlined communication
The telehealth interface uses dynamic cards to display patient info, adjusting size and detail based on urgency, with a message log on the right organized by time and filter tabs
The bedside interface shows real-time waveforms and allows quick voice messaging with editable transcripts. Communication is supported via audio, text, and calls, with visual cues to show when both nurses are viewing the same patient—enhancing real-time collaboration
Telehealth Nurse View
General View
The Log
In View
Bedside Nurse View
General View
Audio Note
The Log
©️Chenxi Li 2025