HospApp — task manager for hospitals
— Though it can take just minutes to page a doctor and receive either a return call or a resource at the bedside; some patients may not have these minutes. The cost of communication delays during the course of patient care, though hard to quantify, would likely far exceed any equipment price.
Stfalcon’s Task
According to a study from the Journal of Hospital Medicine, nearly 80% of hospitals still use pagers.
Our client wanted to create a new mobile system, which would maintain the interaction between all the employees in the groups linked to a particular patient individually. It’s possible to communicate, send files, prescribe and carry out tasks referring to a particular patient in the group. All the information about the patient would be highly secure and wouldn’t go anywhere outside the hospital.
The aim of the system is:
- Decreasing of the waiting time for the patients, to improve the service
- Quick reaction to emergencies, to reduce risks for the patients
- Automation of the documentation, interaction, management and control for the staff
- Simple and intuitive interface, messenger-like, for the app to be convenient and clear for any experienced messenger user
Solution
We created a demo Android application containing the main features for the hospital staff. Stfalcon team provided: user interface design, android development, manual testing, quality assurance and implementation. However, we worked only with several screens:
- Messages
- Chat room/group
- Tasks which have the main features of chatting and task management
Messages – it’s a list of groups. Each group is tied to the patient and category: cleaning, food, doctor, medical record, etc.
Inside the group the members can: text messages, convert speech-to-text, attach photos and files, call to the members online, create tasks, and fulfill them. The tasks are automatically assigned to the member, which is on shift at the moment. The task remains “in progress” until the responsible person changes the status for “completed”. The main challenge was to clearly indicate the difference between the text messages and tasks and make the tasks stand out, since they are in priority. Tasks screen are the tasks in chronological order with the filters according to statuses and received/assigned tasks.
Technologies
Android app adheres to the Clean Architecture principles and it’s divided into 3 modules for the simplicity of development and maintenance in future. Instead of the traditional Backend, Firebase was used, Firebase Authentication for authorization, Firebase Database for the users’ and patients’ data storing, Firebase Storage for files and photos storage.
Result
We have developed an app for the communication between the hospital personnel, the main mission of which is task creation and fulfillment by the staff.
