MediCart
The Medication Cart Management System (MediCart) enhances the efficient distribution of medication during the entire process involving healthcare professionals and patients, ensuring well-organised and streamlined management of medication carts. MediCart is developed to help healthcare professional to facilitate medication delivery for IPD patients within a ward and hospital. It aims to ease access, organise, store and transport medication to the patients's bedside through well-organised tracking program, easy maneuver and enough storage drawers for the operations.
Overview
Business Goals
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To create a system that manages the use of Medicart to better the IPD operations.
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The system must be used by healthcare professional to assign and dispense medication to IPD patient within a particular ward.
Issues
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Transition from Offline Manual Process
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Fragmented Data Management
checklist
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Lack of Temperature Tracking
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Insufficient Humidity Monitoring
Key Tasks
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Wire-framing, Lo-fi and Hi-fi prototyping
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Design system setting up
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Usability testing
7Rs Protocol
7Rs Protocol is a set of principles and guidelines designed to ensure the safe and effective use of medication carts in healthcare settings. The protocol emphasises the importance of patient safety and medication administration accuracy. The 7Rs Protocol is a fundamental framework used in healthcare to reduce medication errors and promote patient safety during the medication administration process. Healthcare providers are trained to follow these principles rigorously to ensure the well-being of patients and to comply with healthcare standards and regulations.
Pain Points
Manual process and fragmented information of drug documentation and verification
Prior to the implementation of the Medicart solution, healthcare professionals relied on a paper-based process for recording medication information when dispensing to patients. This manual approach led to inefficiencies and potential errors. Prior to the implementation of the Medicart solution, healthcare professionals relied on a paper-based process for recording medication information when dispensing to patients. This manual approach led to inefficiencies and potential errors. Prior to the implementation of the Medicart solution, healthcare professionals relied on a paper-based process for recording medication information when dispensing to patients. This manual approach led to inefficiencies and potential errors.
Transition from Offline Manual Process
Prior to the implementation of the Medicart solution, healthcare professionals relied on a paper-based process for recording medication information when dispensing to patients. This manual approach led to inefficiencies and potential errors.
Lack of Temperature Tracking
Maintaining the quality of medications demanded constant temperature monitoring. Without an automated system in place, ensuring consistent temperature levels was a challenge that impacted medication efficacy and safety.
Insufficient Humidity Monitoring
Similar to temperature, humidity monitoring was crucial for maintaining medication quality. The lack of a dedicated system for humidity tracking raised concerns about the storage conditions and overall effectiveness of the medications.
Fragmented Data Management
The absence of a centralized data system resulted from the manual process, causing data fragmentation. The scattered nature of information made it difficult to retrieve complete records and posed challenges when generating comprehensive reports.
Value Proposition
Transition from Offline Manual Process
Normally, healthcare providers used a paper system to log medication details during patient dispensing. This traditional method was slow and sometimes led to mistakes. Medicart was developed to reduce the risk of errors in dispensing medications, aiming to streamline the entire process. With Medicart, healthcare providers now have a digital assistant that keeps track of medications with precision and speed. It's like having an extra pair of eyes and hands – the system checks and double-checks prescriptions, dosages, and patient information, making sure everything matches up before any medication leaves the pharmacy.
Ideation & Brainstorming
The Medicart solution effectively addresses these challenges by introducing a technologically advanced medication cart management system. This innovative approach centralizes data, replaces manual processes, and integrates temperature and humidity tracking capabilities. Through the Medicart solution, healthcare professionals can streamline their workflows, enhance patient safety, and ensure the optimal quality of medications throughout the distribution process.
The Main Flows
Patients and Drawer Assigning
The first flow begins when healthcare providers log in through the Hospital Information System (HIS). Once logged in, they arrive at the Medicart Homepage, where they can select an empty drawer. From there, they access the Patients Pool, which is likely a database of patients admitted to the ward or hospital. The next step involves selecting the type of patients—differentiating between new patients who are not yet assigned a drawer and those who are already assigned. For new patients, after selection, healthcare workers can then add the patient to the chosen drawer, completing the assignment process. This assignment is confirmed with a notification that the patient has been successfully added.
Delete Assigned Drawer
Starting from the Medicart Homepage, healthcare workers select a drawer that has been previously assigned to a patient. They then initiate the process to delete the patient's information from this drawer. A decision node in the flowchart asks for confirmation: if the deletion is confirmed ('Yes'), the drawer is then marked as free, indicating it is available to be assigned to a new patient. If the deletion is not confirmed ('No'), the drawer remains assigned to the current patient. This flow is likely synchronized with the Hospital Information System (HIS), where a patient's discharge from an inpatient department (IPD) or ward triggers the need to free up the assigned drawer in the Medicart system. This ensures that the medication cart is up to date with patient movements, maintaining an organized and efficient medication distribution system within the healthcare facility.
Design System & Prototyping
The Design System
The user interface (UI) of Medicart is crafted with a strong emphasis on user accessibility and patient safety. Interactive elements such as buttons and call-to-action prompts are designed to be prominent and unambiguous to healthcare personnel. This clarity in design is crucial, as it can bolster the confidence of the staff, leading to decisive actions and reducing the likelihood of hesitation when dispensing medications. Such a thoughtful UI layout can contribute significantly to streamlining the medication distribution process, ensuring that healthcare workers can focus on providing care without the added concern of navigating a complex system.
Main Homepage
Managing drawers & displaying cart's status
Healthcare staff have the convenience of entering the homepage directly after signing in through the Hospital Information System (HIS). The homepage is thoughtfully divided into two distinct sections: one displaying the current state of the cart, and another for managing the drawers. Included on the homepage are details of the ward, indicators of the cart's status, and drawer management features. This homepage is intentionally structured to offer a complete and streamlined interface for healthcare workers to handle medications and supplies effectively in a clinical environment.
Assigning Patients with Drawers
Managing drawers & displaying cart's status
This function allows medical staff to allocate a distinct drawer for each patient by utilizing the connection with the HIS system, which organizes the patient data within the ward where Medicart is operating. This facilitates the process for healthcare workers to associate a patient's name with a specific drawer with more convenience, streamlining the dispensation of medications in the operations.
Medicart Reports
Managing drawers & displaying cart's status
The report function serves as a detailed historical log for the Medicart, allowing healthcare professionals to effortlessly trace and review the documentation of dispensed medications. This feature provides a transparent record of every transaction, ensuring that staff can quickly verify past activities and maintain accurate dispensing records. Ultimately, it provides valuable insights into daily operations, helping staff to deliver safe, efficient, and accurate patient care.