Enhancing an existing patient dashboard with the use of Internet of Things

Abstract

Internet of Things has now become a common trend in the healthcare sector as, with the help of different devices, multiple problems and tasks can be either solved or automated [1]. The aim of this dissertation was to enhance a current web application used at Mater Dei Hospital called the patient dashboard by improving the overall user experience for the medical practitioners while also introducing case studies that make use of Internet of Things. The patient dashboard project was piloted in August 2018 and is currently being used by over 1000 medical practitioners. It is used to connect multiple modules from all departments to store all patient data on a single screen such as medication and blood tests. Many case studies were viewed and analysed to identify where IoT is being used in healthcare and how it can be further implemented within the patient dashboard [2]. Usability studies were also conducted at Mater Dei Hospital on the present patient dashboard to get a better understanding of how and where IoT is being used at the hospital. Results from this study have shown that overall; the application offers a wide-variety of functionality, however, the medical practitioners pointed out certain UI drawbacks that impact the amount of steps required to carry out a task. Upon getting further clarification, the case studies with the most scores given by the participants were designed and implemented creating prototypes to be evaluated later on in the study. The features introduced made use of IoT devices which include QR readers, barcode readers as well as NFC reading and writing. To evaluate this study, another usability review was then carried out on the prototypes developed. The participants found the new UI to be less time consuming (to access certain features) but also relatively clear and easy to read. Last but not least, when attempting the features that made use of IoT devices, medical practitioners were greatly satisfied with the performance and how much they facilitated conditions.