Since the summer of 2022, the M.S. Design + Innovation (MD+I) team has been collaborating with ICTR and the D4ED team to explore how design thinking can improve public health research. We've focused on enhancing the feasibility, scalability, and sustainability of early-stage projects, particularly for historically underrepresented groups. Through workshops and consultations, we've empowered health-related researchers to integrate insights from various fields, ensuring a holistic approach to public health challenges.
In our project at the UW Rheumatology clinic, we aimed to significantly enhance the care experience for lupus nephritis patients. With the support of ICTR and D4ED, we used design thinking to improve patient interactions with Electronic Health Records (EHRs) and patient portals. This wasn't just about tech upgrades; it was about understanding what patients truly need and navigating challenges like HIPAA regulations and busy schedules. Our goal was to help doctors devise a smoother, more personalized care experience, ultimately improving patient wellbeing.
Transforming Lupus Care with Research and Design
Image Credits: Towfiqu Barbhuiya via Unsplash
Project Objective
Role: Documentation, Research, User Interviews, User Testing
Note: All of the information in this project has been anonymized and a lot of it has been redacted in order to ensure patient privacy.
Healthcare Provider Perspective
Primary Research
Our primary research involved conducting four in-depth listening sessions with key healthcare professionals at both the UW Rheumatology clinic and other hospitals. We aimed to gain a comprehensive understanding of their experiences and perspectives on patient care, especially concerning lupus nephritis. Each session lasted an hour, with our team taking detailed notes and asking targeted questions to facilitate meaningful conversations. The notes were transcribed and organized using affinity mapping techniques, allowing us to identify and categorize key insights. This process highlighted crucial areas for improvement in patient and provider wellbeing, emphasizing the need for better interactions with Electronic Health Records (EHRs) and patient portals. The research provided a solid foundation for our design thinking approach, ensuring that our solutions were grounded in real-world needs and challenges.
Insights Mapping.
Simultaneous Secondary Desk Research
We conducted supplementary desk research to enhance our understanding of the terms and concepts from our listening sessions. This helped us gain additional context and insights, and allowed us to explore potential ideas with an open and unbiased approach. This step ensured our solutions were well-informed and innovative.
Insights
From our research and listening sessions, we identified several critical areas for improvement in patient and provider experiences. These key insights highlight the main focus areas that can significantly enhance care for lupus nephritis patients:
1) Work within the EHR portal's existing processes to enhance the experience.
2) Reduce physician fatigue and time constraints.
3) Focus on improving results management.
4) Connect digital and physical patient experiences.
5) Provide information in various formats to accommodate different literacy, cultural, and medical knowledge levels, and to manage patient overwhelm.
Patient Perspective
Focus Groups
The second prong of our research focused on understanding the patient perspective. This process had its challenges due to strict laws protecting patient privacy, which require extensive due diligence before engaging with patients. After navigating the IRB process, we observed a focus group led by one of our team doctors and their patient advisory board. Our team of three took detailed notes for three lupus patients each, in a group of nine. We captured not only their words but also their behaviors and interactions. This resulted in an affinity map that highlighted general observations and patterns in patient experiences.
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Empowering Doctors with Design Thinking
As the collaboration between the design team and the team of doctors was ending soon, we also took this opportunity to take notes on the structure and format of the focus group. We used these notes to come up with a set of guidelines and recommendations that could help the doctors make their focus groups more human-centered in the future.
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Synthesis
Recommendations and Implementation
The synthesis of all this research led to the design team making a bunch of recommendations and possible design solutions. We also made sure to rank them in order of how easy those solutions were to implement. With this handoff, we wanted to ensure that the doctors understood what parts of the healthcare process for lupus patients needed improvement and how they could make that happen. The idea of providing a list of solutions with a scale of implementability was to make it easy for the doctors to pick solutions based on the bandwidth of their team.
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Key Learnings
Empathy
Throughout this project, we learned the importance of empathy in design thinking. Listening to patients share their struggles with lupus and understanding the challenges doctors face due to being overworked required us to be genuinely empathetic. Ensuring that both patients and healthcare providers felt heard and valued was crucial to our approach and success.
Navigating Healthcare Complexities
We gained a deep understanding of the intricacies of the healthcare system. The numerous laws and restrictions, while sometimes frustrating, are essential for the protection and betterment of patients. This experience taught us how to navigate these complexities effectively, balancing innovation with compliance to improve patient care.
