Background:
Currently, digitalization has an impact on almost all areas of life and industries, and results in standardization and automation of processes. Due to the increasing usage of mobile devices and also patients who use a mobile device, it has become more and more important to optimize patient journeys in healthcare facilities with the help of digital solutions and self-service technologies. But there is only little technology used in the admission process that includes all activities related to patient admission. To relieve administrative employees and simplify the process for patients, a digital solution is aimed.
Project idea:
The project Hospital Check-in addresses digital patient onboarding, which aims to simplify the admission management of patients to a healthcare facility. Patients can check in online from home and receive information about their treatment and the clinic before their stay, aiming for an ideal preparation. This includes a digital document management, an appointment schedule, checklists and preparation videos. Not only patients will benefit from this, but administrative admission staff will also be relieved.
The prototype:
How does it work?
After the Patients got the appointment scheduled, an email will be sent where a link leads to the patient’s personalized Hospital Check-in site. There the patient is able to set an appointment reminder and edit or view their data on the personal device only (Figure 1, 2). This ensures that the patients won’t lose control over their data.
Figure 1
Figure 2
What’s unique about Hospital Check-in? Data transmission is completely save for our users. A lot of work went into looking for a suitable method of personal data transmission. As a result we came up with the smart idea of transmitting this data only after the patient is connected with the hospitals network.
Evaluation
The aim of the evaluation was to answer the following question: How high is the acceptance and usability of the current prototype of Hospital Check-in?
Therefore a guided group discussion and a usability questionnaire survey have been conducted with a total of eight persons with different gender and age distribution. The goal of the guided group discussion/focus group was to gather feedback from potential users on the prototype of “Hospital Check-in”. For this purpose, the prototype was presented and tested. The data has then been processed and visualized with Microsoft Excel.
The results show an overall acceptance of digital patient administration of above 85 percent in our participants. The completeness and easily understandable structure of the administration process, in addition to the understandability of content from“Hospital Check-In” has been criticized by the users.
Features such as the appointment reminder and the packing checklist have received positive feedback, while some unnecessary implementations for aesthetic reasons impaired the structure of the web application.
For a further project development, for instance within a master thesis, the evaluation results could be used to adapt the prototype to the user feedback.
For more information you can watch our concept video
A project at the St. Pölten University of Applied Sciences Master Program Digital Healthcare
Project Coach: FH-Prof. Anita Kidritsch, PT MSc
