The Challenge: Parents of children with congenital heart disease (CHD) need to understand the condition, treatments, and how to manage their child’s ongoing healthcare needs at home. Parents may have difficulty understanding this information due to multiple factors, so early and repeated education is important to prepare parents for managing their child’s health at home. These needs create an opportune space for a novel intervention. Through the co-creation process between the study team, clinicians, and families, an intervention including a quick reference guide, an app, and eleven clinical pathways has been created.
The Team: Blake Lane - PhD Design Research Fellow; Jiani Zhu - MDes; Jiakang Qi - MDes; Jamie Maier - Industrial Design Co-op; Hannah Eber - Industrial Design Co-op
The Timeline: May 2016 - December 2017
During the co-creation session, 12 clinical staff and 12 families identified their preferred educational tools and created their ideal toolbox for learning new content. Three tools were identified by both stakeholder groups. Those three tools were: applications, websites, and face-to-face conversations.
The ideal intervention would manifest as a system involving a printed quick reference guide and a mobile website, both promoting open communication between parents and clinicians.
Based on the feedback of the prototypes, the end product must be: 1) sustainable - it should have a long shelf like, be usable for parents throughout the CHD journey, and be cost effective for the hospital to print; 2) portable - it should be light enough and easy enough to carry to and from the hospital; and 3) innovative - it must have a novel aspect for parents and clinicians to recognize it above and beyond normal handouts already being provided by the hospital.
During the icon testing, a total of 20 different icons were tested and refined for efficacy. Clinical staff and parents commented on the effectiveness of each icon.
The organization of content was modified based on feedback from the task analysis completed by all stakeholders. The reorganized content became the new architecture for the mobile based website. Additionally, this newly organized content crafted the final educational sections of the quick reference guide.
The system of products are currently being tested at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital and Medical Center for efficacy and further refinements. Publication on the process is pending.
Credits to: Sandra Staveski, PhD; Barbara Giambra, PhD; Nicolas Madsen, MD; Samuel Hanke, MD