Designing Shift Handoff Software: Clinical Learners and Design Students Collaborate Using the “Design Thinking” Process

Abstract

Handoffs in patient care responsibilities between practitioners are common in the hospital setting. Because inadequate communication can lead to patient harm, professional organizations have published recommendations and practical guides to support standardized workflow. However, currently available electronic medical record (EMR) tools rarely provide the requisite functionality to support work and often suffer from major usability flaws. Our internal medicine residency program sponsored a quality improvement initiative to improve the design of handoff tools. To support this initiative, our medical informatics program collaborated with a school of architecture and design to identify requirements and ideate interface prototypes. In this article, we describe how we used Design Thinking principles and methods to inform our product design lifecycle, create novel designs, and teach inter-professional students health systems science concepts.