Implementation of an Interactive Touchscreen Kiosk System in a Hospital - Essay Example

Implementation of an Interactive Touchscreen Kiosk System in a Hospital School Implementation of an Interactive Touchscreen Kiosk System in a Hospital Executive Summary The Project is the implementation of Touchscreen kiosk in a tertiary care multispecialty hospital. More than 50 networked kiosks would be placed in several empty locations across the hospital and would provide information on various medical conditions, human structures and functions, diagnostic tests, imaging techniques, medical procedures, treatment procedures, nutritional information, drugs and outcomes, as well as other health-related information, such as news, statistics, latest medical findings, doctor information, symptom checker, home remedies, maps of the hospital, timings, services provided at the hospital, different health plans available, etc. It would serve as a vital tool within healthcare system. The Touchscreen kiosk would have several objectives that would mainly be for the benefit of the hospital and for creating greater awareness in patients so as to improve the quality of care. There would be some risks with the project including refusal from various quarters of the hospital to help with the delivery, improper location of the kiosks, sudden decisions taken by the management not to support the project, database/server failures, networking issues, power failure, poor hardware and software quality causing dysfunction periods, poor user interface, graphical designs, etc. The implementation costs of the TKIP would be around $500,000 with the running costs of $5000 per month. A revamp of the kiosk system would be planned every 3 to 4 years. The hospital has planned the implementation of the kiosks after a one year period when the procurement of resources, setting up network points and installing the kiosks, running the hardware, developing the user interface and creating the content would be ready. The funding from the same would come from the IT budget that is print for the hospital. Internally and externally content management software would be required along with an interface to provide remote support to the various kiosks deployed in the hospital and in remote locations. In terms of scope, the customer expects to obtain greater knowledge and be able to make informed decisions regarding the healthcare. In this way, the customers can feel that they are fully in control of their body and, hence, the quality of services provided would increase. The entire project would be implemented by the Project Management Team which would work in coordination with the Department of Medical Informatics and Healthcare IT (DMIHIT) of the Hospital. 1. Project Scope The project proposed is for the implementation of touchscreen kiosks in a tertiary care multi-specialty academic teaching hospital (called as Hospital X). The kiosk itself and the content prepared for the patients, public and other audiences would be developed in-house and within by the Department of Medical Informatics and Healthcare Information technology. Intention of creating a network of kiosks across the hospitals and beyond could be networked using the Internet or LAN and used as a means for broadcasting current medical information for the patients. The kiosks would not only present information on various medical conditions, human structures and functions, diagnostic tests, imaging techniques, medical procedures, treatment procedures, nutritional information, drugs, and outcomes, but also other health-related information such as news, statistics, latest medical findings, doctor information, symptom checker, home remedies, maps of the hospital, timings, services provided at the hospital, different health plans available, etc. In this way the kiosks would be a tool to holistically educate the patient on various health-related topics ensuring that they serve as a primary tool for information-seeking in the hospital. By ensuring that the patients come back and rely on the information presented in the kiosks, the success and effectiveness of the project would be guaranteed and efforts would be made to improve the functioning of the kiosks to a new level. The success of the project depends on various resources. Besides, the functioning of the hospital would also devolve upon the kiosk. Some of the dependences or resources required to maintain smooth functioning of the kiosk (See Appendix 4 for resources required). The Touchscreen Kiosk Implementation Project (TKIP) would have certain objectives that would be in line with the mission of the hospital. The missions of the hospital are multilayered. Firstly, the mission is to recognize the value of every person and ensure that the well-being of any patient is brought about by excellence and leadership in the hospital. Secondly, the mission is to provide a center for giving the best physical, mental, emotional and spiritual care for the patients and to provide highly specialized healthcare services for the patients at affordable costs. Thirdly, the mission includes building an environment that solves not only the health-related problems of the patients but also helps educate and build awareness amongst the masses. Fourthly, it is to bring about Excellency in healthcare education and to work with other institutions having similar objectives in order to improve the quality of care and provide leadership. Finally, an environment for learning for the staff, doctors, students, volunteers, friends, partners, and anyone interested is provided (Mission Statement, 2012) The objectives of the TKIP would include: Supply a tool that would provide basic health information that is searchable for the patients, public and other individuals. Provide graphical interpretations, figures and images that would help the user to understand health information better. To bring about required changes in health behavior and create greater awareness on various health issues. Enable patients to be self-sufficient for searching information, absorbing required information and becoming self-sufficient. 2. Project Outlines Business Case: Purpose & Rationale Lin et al. (2001) found that patients often want to obtain more information of the medical condition that they are suffering from. However, Lin notes that there is a greater need to provide an interactive kiosk wherein the user could contain the support team through the kiosk and ask for specific ways of obtaining the information. For example, when the study was conducted, users making spelling mistakes of the disease condition could not find the required health information. Hence, they had to often abort searching the health information needed. To overcome this problem, the project implementation provided a support mechanism and interactive kiosk wherein the user could seek remote help. With the advent of semantic searches and improved search technologies that could promote the user the right spelling, remote support may not be needed with such greater degree of elaboration. The deliverables and outcome of the project would include catering to the knowledge need of the patient population who would otherwise require greater time and efforts from the physician and other healthcare providers. Modules would be developed for various diseases and the patients can view information specific to their needs. Besides, information can be obtained from willing patients, such as surveys, questionnaires, etc. The patient can also obtain information about the services of the hospital and in this way be more familiar with the hospital system. The main rationale for providing health information kiosks is to meet the knowledge requirements of the patients and, accordingly, encourage the physicians to advocate the use of kiosks for patients that want to know more of their medical condition (Cowper, 2011). 3. Options for Project Delivery Though the hospital had chosen interactive touchscreen kiosks for health education and awareness of the patient, there were many other options that were considered including usage of manned kiosk, having a patient education unit, broadcasting health information to the patient on request of mobile phones, sending specific health information to patients to their email address, distributing pamphlets and other education materials to the patient, and seeking wider education services from the nurses. However, even after considering all these options, the best delivery method that was available were interactive touch screen kiosks, though the hospital did not want to completely ignore the other delivery modes. All manual methods would be costly for the hospital and sending health information through mobile phones or email address was going to be difficult for the patients who did not have smart phones or email ID’s. Besides, distributing pamphlets and other education materials was going to be difficult for the hospital because the material had to be printed for various health topics (Cowper, 2011). 4. High-Level Project Risk Management Some of the risks that may be present during delivery include refusal from various quarters of the hospital to help with the delivery, improper location of the kiosks, sudden decisions taken by the management not to support the project, database/server failures, networking issues, power failure, poor hardware and software quality causing dysfunction periods, poor user interface, graphical designs, etc (Lin, et al., 2001). The position and location of the kiosks should be planned early and all the hospital staff should be educated of the project well in advance. Management should take up the project unless they are totally convinced that it would be an effective means of educating and creating awareness of the patient. Networking issues and hardware/software failures can be minimized by having backup kiosks and a support team that would make immediate replacements. A backup server should also be functional to yield a backup system of information in case the main server goes down. The graphical design and the user interface should be tested out thoroughly with users who would actually be using the system in the future. The content portrayed on the kiosk should be properly validated (Horsley, 2010). 5. Project Resource Costs The plan was to have about 50 kiosks in various locations across the hospital including the OPD, reception, waiting rooms, IP wards, pharmacy, outside the phlebotomy unit, radiology department, etc, so that the patient can access the relevant information as needed. Each of these kiosks would cost the hospital about $2000 and for a total of 60 (10 backup). During the implementation phase, the services of a project planning and implementation team would be sought 3 months before and 3 months. The implementation costs of the TKIP would be around $500,000 with the running costs of $5000 per month. A revamp of the kiosk system would be planned every 3 to 4 years. See Appendix 1 for costs. 6. Project Stages & Timescales The hospital has planned the implementation of the kiosks after a one year period when the procurement of resources, setting up network points and installing the kiosks, running the hardware, developing the user interface and creating the content would be ready. These are the timelines (Tyco Electronics, 2012).See Appendix 2 for Project timelines. 7. Project Investment Appraisal As mentioned earlier, the cost of implementing the project would be $500,000 with a monthly running cost of $5000. Every 3 to 4 years the system would be revamped and the cost for the same would be at least $200,000. The funding from the same would come from the IT budget that is print for the hospital. During this year, it is not proposed to have any major implementation of IT other than the kiosks and the costs would be somewhat affordable for the hospital. The benefits of the project would include faster OPD services, less workload on the physicians and other healthcare providers to deliver health information, Greater benefit of waiting time, less use of booklets and charts to educate the patient, better awareness of the hospital timings and services and increase in the patient numbers. The revenue generated from sharing hospital content with other hospital having kiosks networked and reduced licensing for content generated by the hospital. Fewer cases of negligence and lesser medical errors (by better educating the patient) would be noted and there would be an increase in the services sought by the patients (as the patients are better educated of the services available and details of the services). The patient satisfaction would be increased along with the self-care. Besides, the other benefits would include decrease of emergency calls made by the patients and removal of service desks. The measurable outcomes include increase in the utilization of service, decrease of medical errors and cases of negligence, better patient satisfaction (obtained through surveys on the kiosk), less number of staff needed, increase in the number of patients handled by each physician and increase in the number of patients handled by the hospital (Westman, 2000; Connell, 2003). 8. Project Interfaces Internally and externally content management software would be required along with an interface to provide remote support to the various kiosks deployed in the hospital and in remote locations. The content management system would enable publishing of all evidence-based content after the same has been authored, edited, validated and uploaded finally. The remote user interface would help provide voice, video and remote support to the users of kiosks located within and outside the hospital. As an evidence for such a system, a kiosk system was implemented at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC), Tennessee, and these clinics serve more than 1.2 million patients annually. When the systems were designed, both internal and external interfaces were configured to ensure that the kiosks could be updated. The interfaces were not only set up to update the EMR records but also billing information (Rhoades and Drazen 2009). 9. Project Quality Expectations In terms of scope, the customer expects to obtain greater knowledge and be able to make informed decisions regarding the healthcare. In this way, the customers can feel that they are fully in control of their body and, hence, the quality of services provided would increase. With relation to cost, since most of the kiosks would be placed outside the service provider locations or in waiting rooms, the time of the patients is better utilized. The patients can also use the kiosk during their free-time. In terms of quality, since the patients are in better control of their healthcare and would be better educated of the various interventions and medical conditions, they would be better prepared, and hence, the quality of care would be improved. With relation to costs, kiosks would enable greater cost-effectiveness of the medical services as the time spend with the care provider would be decreased. Further, since the utilization of services would increase, there are chances that the hospital may reduce the costs (PBN, 2012). 10. Associated Documents A list of documents is being provided in Appendix 5 for Documentation. These documents provide information to various stakeholders including instructions to users, diagrammatic representation of the location of the various kiosks for planning, workflow of the content creation setup, financial information for the management to take up, list of surveys that would go on to the kiosks for the researchers, the database map of the kiosks for the system administrators, and the Roles and responsibilities of each human resource involved in the kiosk project. 11. Customers & Users of Project Deliverables See Appendix 3 for Deliverables 12. Proposed Project Governance: The entire project would be implemented by the Project Management Team which would work in coordination with the Department of Medical Informatics and Healthcare IT (DMIHIT) of the Hospital. The DMIHIT would generate the data using a content development team. Further, it would handle the servers, the hardware, networking and the software team. The DMIHIT would claim ownership of the project, but would work in close coordination with the various departments where the kiosks are installed (Clark, 2008). Conclusion The Touchscreen kiosk implementation is a good tool for increasing the quality of care provided by the hospital, improvement of the awareness and education of the patients. It could also serve as a business model helping the hospital to build and develop its own content and further deliver it to other institutions. The costs of the kiosks need to be bundled in the IT Project, and during its implementation there should not be any other major IT implementations in the Hospital. Finally, the project needs to be taken closely by the IT Department of the Hospital with other clinical and administrative departments, and supported closely by the management. Bibliography Clark, K., 2008. Implementing Touch-screen Technology to Enhance Recognition of Distress. Psycho-Oncology. 10, [online] Available at: http://www.psycho-oncology.info/Karen_touch.pdf Connell, C. M., 2003. The Development of an Alzheimer’s Disease Channel for the Michigan Interactive Health Kiosk Project. J Health Commune. 8(1):11-22. Cowper, C., 2011. What Types Of Applications Are Suitable For Touchscreen Surveys? [online] Available at: http://www.articledashboard.com/Article/What-Types-of-Applications-are-Suitable-for-Touchscreen-Surveys/2487316 Horsley, B., 2010. Kiosk Implementation: First Steps. [online] Available at: http://global.networldalliance.com/downloads/white_papers/Kiosk-Applications_4.pdf Lin, I. F., 2001. The Feasibility of Remote-Controlled Assistance as a Search Tool for Patient Education. AMIA. 5207: 377-383. [online] Available at: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2243344/pdf/procamiasymp00002-0417.pdf PBN, 2011. Quality Partners Is First in Nation to Implement Computerized Hospital Patient Education with Medicare Funding. [online] Available at: http://www.pbn.com/Quality-Partners-is-First-in-Nation-to-Implement-Computerized-Hospital-Patient-Education-with-Medicare-Funding,46318 Rhoades, J. and Drazen, E. 2009. Touch-screen Check-in. [online] Available at: http://www.chcf.org/~/media/MEDIA%20LIBRARY%20Files/PDF/T/PDF%20TouchscreenCheckInKiosks.pdf Tyco Electronics Corporation, 2012. Strategies for Successful Kiosk Implementation. [online] Available at: http://www.elotouch.com/Solutions/CaseStudies/kioskwp.asp Westman, J., 2000. Efficacy of a Touch-screen Computer Based Family Cancer History Questionnaire and Subsequent Cancer Risk Assessment. J Med Genec. 37(5): 354–360. [online] Available at: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1734575/?tool=pubmed Total Word Count (Only Content) = 2400 Appendix 1: Costs Resource Amount No of Kiosk planned 50 Backup Kiosk 10 Total Kioks to be purchased 60 Cost of each Kiosk 2000 Overall Costs for Kiosks 120000 Networking cost per kioks 50 Total networking costs for 50 kiosks 2500 Costs of factsheets (10000 factsheets at $25 per) 250000 Costs of servers (2 servers) 3000 Running costs of Kioks 250000 Project Implementation Team costs 120000 Total Implementation costs 500,000 Appendix 2: Project Timelines Timeline - January 2013 to December 2013 with launch on Jan 2013 No. Activity Duration Period 1 Planning the Implementation 3 months Jan 2013 to March 2013 2 Developing the content 12 months Jan 2013 to December 2013 3 Installing the network points and power units 3 months April 2013 to June 2013 4 Procuring and setting up the servers 3 months July 2013 to September 2013 5 Procuring the kiosks with hardware 4 months July 2013 to October 2013 6 Design and testing the user interface 4 months July 2013 to October 2013 7 Installing software and user interface 3 months September 2013 to November 2013 8 Procuring & training the human resources required for the project 2 months July 2013 to August 2013 9 Test run of the entire system before the launch 15 days December 1 2013 to December 15 2013 10 Resolution of any associated problems 15 days December 15 2013 to December 30 2013 11 Launch of the kiosk system   January 1 2013 Appendix 3: Project Deliverables No. Stakeholder Deliverables for each user Quality 1 Patients Health information Accurate, evidence based 2 Patents Symptom checker and searches Accuracy 3 Patients Graphics Greater understanding 4 Physicians Time per patient Less time 5 Physician Quality Improvement in quality 6 Management healthcare services Greater efficiency 7 Management Utilization Greater utilization 8 Management Customer Increase in customer 9 Public Quality Improved quality of services 10 Other Hospitals Utilization Utilization of the networked kiosks Appendix 4: Resources to be procured No. Resources Needed 1 Network Points 2 LAN Points 3 Hardware requirements of the kiosk 4 Software requirements of the kiosk 5 Power and UPS 6 Printers connected to the kiosk 7 Content Building team 8 Network and support team 9 Healthcare professionals to advocate usage 10 Tech-savvy patients Appendix 5: Documentation No. Documentations 1 Diagrammatic map - location of various kiosks 2 Workflow of the information content 3 Financial data for implementation and maintenance 4 List of surveys being placed on the various kiosks 5 User-related information 6 Role and responsibility of each HR for the Project 7 Database map Appendix 6: Diagram of the Kiosk Read More