Innlandet Hospital Trust is one of 15 health trusts in Helse Sør-Øst and covers the counties of Hedmark and Oppland of Norway. The health trust consists of 10 divisions with services over 41 sites in Hedmark and Oppland.

Client Goal

Innlandet Hospital Trust was looking to develop an innovative mobile health solution to help patients and doctors make better treatment decisions and better use available information (e.g., medical records) – either from research or as hard-earned experience.

The tool had to meet the following key goals:

• Summarize treatment research data and present it in a user-friendly format for patients to have a clear understanding of treatment options available and make final decisions on the best option based on their preferences, lifestyles, work schedules, etc.
• Allow patients to monitor their conditions over time.
• Facilitate medical research on the feasibility of innovative treatment methods for bipolar disorders, lung disease, stroke, and many other disorders affecting many people.

Solution

Innlandet Hospital Trust outsourced software development and UX design of their innovative patient decision aid app to Intersog.

As a result of cooperation, Intersog built a web and mobile shared decision-making and monitoring system called DECIDE Treatment, explicitly designed for individual use and that addresses either one-off, irreversible decision dilemmas or ongoing decisions permitting regular re-evaluation.

Prototype and UI Design

Our design team cooperated closely with the client, our system architect, and a technical writer to make a logical and flexible foundation for the system. It took us two months to create a fully interactive prototype and prepare all the functional design documentation needed. The prototype was updated weekly to ensure rich functionality and improved usability.

We collaborated for approximately two months on creating a fully interactive prototype, cooperating with the system architect and a technical writer on functional design documentation. In addition, Skype conference calls with Øystein Eiring (Product Owner) twice a week ensured the updated delivery weekly, resulting in a prototype with rich functionality and improved usability.

We didn’t stop until our client said, “It’s almost as perfect as I had imagined!” and approved the final UI design. After this, our design team stepped away and let the system architect finalize the technical documentation.

From UX/UI design perspective we delivered:

• 50+ supporting screens
• A style sheet to ease the coding process
• Design review of the intermediate builds of the tool
• Bugs elimination in the whole visually related part of the code

App Development Phase

To build an application, we implemented cross-platform app development with PhoneGap as well as .Net development technologies.

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Functional Features

• The app facilitates self-help and improved communication between patients and physicians
• It can be used before, after and during doctor consultations
• It calculates a personalized ranking of best treatment options based on a transparent algorithm called the simple weighted sum equation
• Long-term treatments can be monitored over time, enabling users to re-assess their decisions
• The app enables doctors to enter relevant knowledge
• Offers easy, web-based access to shared information for everyone involved
• The app keep patient’s valuable records accessible in accordance with strict privacy and information security policies

Tools/Platform

HTML5 cross platform, responsive design framework deployed using PhoneGap as native app wrapper with a .Net based Content Management Portal.

Benefits

• Patient gets a clear description of the treatment decision, its implications on his/her lifestyle, and has buy-in for it
• Equips patients with condensed, readable knowledge designed to facilitate shared decision-making
• Provides a timeline allowing patients to develop and adjust their treatment preferences over time
• Allows patients and clinicians to personalize the options based on individual patient characteristics
• Generally improves communication between doctors and patients

DECIDE Treatment project was presented to the Royal Norwegian Ministry of Health and Care Services and authorities, including the Prime Minister of Norway Erna Solberg and the Minister of Health. The app was highly appraised and received positive feedback from Norwegian authorities.

Read the interview with Dr. Eiring Øystein, Head of Department of Knowledge Support at Innlandet Health Trust.