The results of a
contest sponsored
by the White House shows how powerful a dose of design can be in treating
what ails our medical system.
Electronic medical records (EMR) are extremely useful tools and
can help improve patient care and reduce costs — if designed and used properly.
Unfortunately, good design is hard to come by in this market. Health IT data
standards, privacy laws, and impenetrable health systems complicate an already
challenging design process and usually lead to lackluster products.
One of the glaring problems is that it can be difficult for
patients to gain access to their medical records. In an effort to combat this
problem, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) developed a program called
"Blue Button," a feature of VA EMRs that allows patients to download their
results.
The program has been
a huge success since its launch in August of 2010, with over 500,000 patients in
the VA system using the service. The Blue Button functionality has since rolled
out to Medicare patients and even private insurers like United
Healthcare are in the process of implementing it.
Only one problem: Its output looks horrible.
Ryan Panchadsaram, a Presidential
Innovation Fellow and former startup founder organized a competition with the
goal of making Blue Button more than a tool for access, but one that would give
patients actionable information, stat.
"We were inspired by the creativity of designers, their
ability to take something that exists, transform it, and make it more valuable
and usable," says Panchadsaram. "Our hope was to challenge some of the best
across the country to take the simple text health record and create a better
patient experience by improving the layout and applying a layer of visual
design."
"We have assembled
a showcase of the top entries that challenged the status quo for the entire
health community to be inspired by and learn from," he explains. "Our next step
is for the curators to select a final design (that may combine elements from
various submissions) to be built and open sourced on the code-sharing site GitHub. Our objective is to build
the Bootstrap for the patient health record. With these tools,
electronic health record software companies across the country should be able to
integrate the final design into their products and contribute to the open-source
project."
The competition had four goals:
- Improve the visual layout and style of the information from the medical record
- Create a human-centered design that makes it easier for patient to manage their health
- Enable health professionals to more effectively understand and use patients' health information
- Help family members and friends care for their loved ones
In the end, 230
individuals and groups responded, and were evaluated by design experts from the
government and design worlds, including renowned pixel surgeon Nicholas Felton.
Even though the designers worked independently, certain themes
carried through many of the winning entries. iPhone and iPad apps were seen as
natural evolution of EMRs even though few exist today. Overall health "scores"
presented as a number inside of a circle were also popular, as well as including
photos of the patients and their caregivers, a design feature common in social
services, but almost unheard of in EMRs. Designers can't replace doctors, but
they have produced a clear prescription for better tools.
Author: Joseph Flaherty
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