The Health Metrics Residential Aged Care app is a tool to enable caregivers to efficiently track and manage residents' health data, including vital signs, medication schedules, and daily activities. Integrating electronic health records and real-time monitoring, the app promptly detects and addresses changes in health status.
Context
In Health Metrics' eCase platform, medication management is a crucial component, allowing users to track and manage residents' medication schedules. Given the importance of this feature for on-site use in residential aged care and retirement villages by caregivers and nurses, I was tasked with integrating this essential functionality into the app.
Problem
Carers and nurses need an intuitive and reliable system to manage and administer medications accurately and on time.
Goal
Develop a user-friendly medication schedule feature that ensures timely administration, reduces errors, and improves overall medication management.
Research phase
An audit was conducted with stakeholders, including interviews with carers and nurses, to understand their behaviours when administering medications to residents and to evaluate the performance of the current eCase platform and app.
Pain points
Insights
• Require clear, easy-to-read medication schedules, instructions, labels and a system that reduces the risk of errors
• When administering medications, it is essential to ensure they are given to the right individual, with the right medication, at the right time, in the right dosage, and using the right method
• Nurses or caregivers concentrate on administering medications to one resident at a time
• Based on the existing eCase data, 94% of medications were successfully taken and 6% had other reasons
• When administering medications, it is essential to ensure they are given to the right individual, with the right medication, at the right time, in the right dosage, and using the right method
• Nurses or caregivers concentrate on administering medications to one resident at a time
• Based on the existing eCase data, 94% of medications were successfully taken and 6% had other reasons
Ideation
The direction of the design was focused on changing the status of both single and multiple medications efficiently and accurately.
User flow chart
Wireframes of single medication and multiple medication
Final designs
Here are some final designs highlighting the key features of the medication schedule functionality. These designs were refined through a process of problem definition, user feedback, and continuous revisions, ensuring a user-centric and effective solution.
Resident's profile
Given the engagement of carers, nurses, and residents, it was logical to retain the initial resident profile layout while ensuring scalability for future features. My focus was on creating a minimalistic yet aesthetically pleasing interface, utilising a consistent colour palette and typography to enhance readability and user experience.
Multiple medications
Pack sign refers to providing residents with multiple medications in a single pack. My design approach prioritised legibility and glanceability by implementing a clear visual hierarchy and labels, indicating the number of medications and the time they should be taken. This ensures that caregivers can quickly and accurately identify and administer the correct medications.
Single medication
I focused on enabling seamless transitions between summary and detailed views for instant access to comprehensive information. Based on the initial data, it was evident that having a "given" status as the primary action and other statuses as secondary actions would allow users to efficiently update the status with just a few taps.
Single medication detailed view
The focus was to deliver thorough and accurate information on each medication, covering dosage, instructions, route, history, Consumer Medicines Information and notes.
