Hospital - Unthinkable

A leading multi-specialty hospital in New York City with over 7000+ practitioners including general practitioners and specialists. It has over 39 multidisciplinary research, education, and clinical institutes. The hospital has over 150,000 inpatient admissions and 500,000 emergency department visits on a monthly basis.

47% Reduced Door-to-Balloon time

50% Faster App Development

1k+ STEMI Patients Monitored

500k Monthly Emergency Visits

The Situation

New York’s leading hospital wants to reduce its door-to-balloon time for STEMI patients through an emergency response app.

The medical treatment for STEMI and cardiogenic shock is affected due to the communication gap between the paramedics and doctors while patients are transferred from the emergency department to the cath lab. The effects of pre-hospital system delays on the treatment efficacy of STEMI patients are mortal.

The client wanted to reduce the communication gap between paramedics and the emergency response team for the treatment of STEMI patients. On the development front, the requirement was to:

Build an integrated mobile-based system that allows paramedics in the field to send ECG data and other patient healthcare information directly to the hospital’s cardiology team.
Build an integrated messaging system that provides stakeholders with real-time patient information while the ambulance is on the way to the hospital, allowing the team to be more prepared when the patient arrives.
Include an ambulance tracking feature in the app so that all stakeholders can keep track of the patient and ensure that they are prepared for medical emergencies.
Ensure that the application follows HL7 guidelines. The HL7 stands for a set of internationally-applicable standards for transferring clinical and administrative data between software applications used by different healthcare institutions.

The Solution

Our business analysts and software architects mapped out the best mobile solution architecture, clarified the functional requirements, and created a comprehensive product vision and roadmap. The UI experts at Unthinkable used design thinking approaches and role-based user stories to create a user interface that was simple to use.

The Unthinkable Software team developed mobile apps for Android and iOS platforms that help to improve clinical outcomes in patients with STEMI and cardiogenic shock. The app offers an interface that allows doctors, nurses, and health assistants to communicate with each other.

Once a STEMI case is identified, a group chat gets created with referrers, acceptors, and the ambulance team as its participants. If it’s the case of cardiogenic shock, the coronary care unit (CCU) or Congestive Heart Failure (CHF) team becomes part of the chat group.

Depending upon the responsibility that a member in the system holds, different user roles are defined in the app:

The Alarm Initiator (referrer): is located outside the hospital and can be a doctor, nurse, or health assistant who can initiate a transfer request. The referrer will submit ECG photos and patient information to the hospital and transfer center’s MD.
The Hospital Team (Acceptor): This user is the hospital’s cardiac specialist. The acceptor team checks the case of STEMI and updates the status to the transfer center based on the information provided by the referrer team.
Transfer Center: This user at the transfer center is in charge of attaching an Ambulance (EMS) with a case and overseeing its administration.
EMS: This user is related to the ambulance and is in charge of picking up and dropping off patients at the hospital. They can also engage in group chat. Members of the group chat may also track the EMS vehicle as it travels to the hospital to pick up the patient.

Impact

The solution aims to expedite the treatment process by ensuring that patients receive the appropriate, timely treatment once they arrive at the hospital. The paramedics in the ambulance can immediately exchange the patient’s results with the hospital’s cardiology staff, ensuring that they are fully prepared when the ambulance arrives. The tool also compares the performance of the healthcare provider to accepted benchmarks for quality improvement monitoring. There are also considerable resource utilization benefits since clinicians may quickly assess ECG data and make appropriate changes to EMS and in-hospital STEMI activations.