Visit project gallery

Designing for interprofessional trust in remote critical care

Specialised Product (IxD1) 2024

Telehealth is defined as any medical activity conducted remotely through an electronic communication system, from medical video conferencing, to remote heart monitoring. This phenomenon is growing rapidly worldwide due to the trend toward rising patient complexity as breakthroughs in healthcare push the boundaries of previously incurable ailments. This trend has put particular strain on nurses, whose daily responsibilities are expanding to incorporate more data analysis into their workflow to accommodate for this complexity. This project was conducted through a partnership with Philips Healthcare and support from Norrlands Universitetssjukhus (NUS). The motivation was to explore the design of a telehealth collaboration tool as a means to address this strain, with an end goal of reclaiming human to human care time by delegating nurses’ new analytical responsibilities between the bedside nurse and telehealth colleague.

Show more Show less

Method

Through methods such as interviews, observations, and body storming, 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. While existing technologies have advanced nursing practices, improving efficiency and patient safety, they have also given rise to public concerns and distrust. When a specialized user, such as telehealth nurses, serve as a critical link between patients and bedside nurses, ensuring effective communication among all levels of professional caregivers becomes a key challenge in the healthcare environment.