Wearabell
/ About Wearabell
/ Background
For over half of a century, hospitals have typically relied on pagers for physician to physician communication. However, as technology has advanced, hospitals have typically upgraded their communication system from pagers to mobile phones in order to maximize the efficiency of communication.
/ Current Technology
One of the current technologies is the EPIC system. EPIC is designed to make the communication between healthcare professionals and patients easier. There are a lot of features that help physicians to keep track of their appointment schedules and contact with their patients. It also gives patients the tools to be healthier with MyChart, Epic's patient portal.
However, these aren't specifically designed to improve the communication between physicians. Since EPIC doesn't provide a good interface for physicians to communicate, users use text message combined with EPIC nowadays. To respond to received messages, receivers of the messages must log into Epic Haiku in order to send a response. And a lot more problems that we will discussed in the later sections.
This is the current interface of Epic Haiku.
/ Features
/ Problems
/ Solutions
Problem 1
One way communication
The one-way communication system provided by Epic requires senders and receivers of messages to go through a separate app in order to send and respond to messages. This makes communication between medical professionals inefficient and unnecessarily time consuming. Our solution to this problem was to create a two-way communication system.
Solution
Our solution to this problem was to create a two-way communication system. By allowing physicians to reply to messages directly through the app without having to rely on a third party SMS system, we are able to maximize the efficiency and easy of communication.
Problem 2
large quantity of messages
Physicians can receive such a large quantity of messages throughout the day that they are not able to address all of the messages they receive within a reasonable time frame. In addition, they are not aware of the urgency of each message.
Solution
By integrating different levels of notifications for varying levels of urgency, doctors are able to rank and respond to requests by the urgency indicated by the color (green, orange, red), the label of the notification (low, high, severe), and the intensity of the vibration.
Problem 3
Unawareness of alarms
Due to the lack of intensity and differences in the alarms and vibrations of the notifications, medical professionals are often unaware that they are receiving messages, especially if the vibration is not strong enough to be felt through their lab coats. This is a high risk problem, as urgent messages may not be received and replied to on time and the patients’ lives may be put at risk .
Solution
Putting this app on a wearable device on one’s wrist will make incoming notifications easier to detect.
Problem 4
unawareness of other's schedules
Since medical professionals are not aware of each other’s schedules, there are times when they message someone who they do not realize is not on shift. Their message is then left unread until the receiver clocks back into work.
Solution
In order to reduce this mistake, we made it so that when someone attempts to message someone that is off shift, short warnings will pop up, giving the sender an option of choosing to message others who are currently on shift.
/ Features
Easy Access
With each worker’s ID badge conveniently located on the login page of the app, you can easily scan yourself into a room or computer without having to have your physical ID badge present. Simply use facial recognition or manually type in your passcode to log into your watch and open up the home screen. Bring your wrist up to the ID badge scanner and just wait for a “beep!”
Contacts Locator
Contact and Locate your Coworkers with ease. Wearabell indicates which coworkers are on shift with “full list of contacts”. Within this full list of contacts, you can view a specific coworker’s general location or distance from you. This would aid you in determining which specific person to message or who might be most capable of responding in a timely manner.
Quick Reply or Snooze Function
When receiving a low severity message, your device will vibrate slightly and pop up in a green color. You can easily snooze the message if you are busy at the time by using the “quick reply” feature. This feature allows you to snooze the message and reply in the amount of time that you get to specify, while implicitly indicating to the sender that you saw their message.
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Urgency
If you receive a high severity message, your device will vibrate at a higher frequency and the message will pop up orange in order to make it more visually and physically noticeable. To reply to any message, just swipe left and start your message through voice recognition or manually typing the keyboard.
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Login and Shift Reminders
Wearabell also has an important feature that reminds you to log into the app when your scheduled shift begins, reducing the chance of forgetting to clock into your shift and allowing for others on shift to message you when appropriate.
/ Future Directions
Centralized
Schedule
System
We plan to integrate a centralized schedule system into our app that can be accessed on mobile devices, wearable devices and laptops. With this feature, multiple work schedules are combined into one central schedule in which every healthcare professional can reference for their convenience when planning meetings and other necessary gatherings.
Contacts
on the
Map
Similarly to the Find My Friends app on the iPhone, users will eventually have the ability to check the real time location of their contacts on a map integrated into Wearabell. Showing the real time location of their contacts would aid in finding their colleagues more quickly.
