Did you know that wearables can be an inspiration for enterprise application design?
Enterprise applications typically tend to lag behind in the user experience area. The nature of enterprise applications, the technology stack involved and limitations on how they are adopted within larger enterprises have traditionally put a limiting factor on how quickly enterprise applications have been able to evolve.
What’s To Like About Wearables…
Wearables provide a unique perspective of the positive influence a technology can make in an end user’s life. When someone starts using a wearable to track physical activity, the feedback loop that the device provides is immediate.
Here are five key aspects to the wearable user experience.
1. What to Track and How to Measure
The first is unique ways in which activity can be measured and how users can pick and choose what to track.
For example, there may be a measurement of number of steps that need to be taken every hour which shows up in a user-friendly dial with active hours clearly marked. Users can easily choose the window of time during which they want this to be tracked.
Another example is a new rating that gets generated for sleep. This is a formula developed by the wearables team that has not necessarily been popularly used by the average person.
2. Multiple Feedback Vehicles
The second is the way the feedback is delivered.
It can be accessed via a mobile app, desktop of the wearable itself. It makes it easy for the user to receive the alerts no matter the time of day and no matter where they are. Whether at work, or fresh from a night’s sleep, users can readily access measurements.
3. Real Time Measurements
The third is the immediacy with which the measurements show up.
In only a few hours the device starts showing how well we are moving around and being active. After the very first night of sleep, it gives a rating for sleep quality.
4. Benchmarks and Comparisons
The fourth is benchmarking and how users can easily compare themselves to peer groups.
This can be really useful for simple metrics such as steps during the day and even more applicable with new concepts such as a sleep rating.
5. Education
The fifth is an educative element.
Once the readings are presented there is an easy avenue to drill down and get more help. For example, to understand the different stages of sleep, the app provides simple guidelines and helpful links for more information.
Why the Principles Behind Wearables Matter for Enterprise Applications…
All of these aspects can benefit a business application as well.
We went on a brainstorming exercise to see how well these principles have been incorporated into the TAGNOS applications. We did well in some areas and generated road map items in other areas which is always a good thing.
1. What to Track and How to Measure
For example, if you apply the first principle of easy and new measurements to the TAGNOS OR application, it should be easy for users to define a window in which the room usage should be measured.
The formula used to calculate the wait and safety ratings is something that we created, which is not a bad thing to do and hopefully this will start a trend.
>> See Applying ArtificiaI Intelligence in Hospitals: The Origin of TAGNOS AI
2. Multiple Feedback Vehicles
Applications tend to be very diverse in the way information is consumed. Enterprise applications should make it easy for users to consume information by creating interfaces for various apps and devices so the information can be consumed via display screens, browsers or mobile devices.
We have always been conscious of these, but this is an ongoing charter as the number of EHRs in the healthcare space makes it an interesting challenge for a startup.
3. Real Time Measurements
The immediacy of feedback in an enterprise application such as OR Orchestration or ED Orchestration is perhaps the most important aspect.
Healthcare has a lot of high stress situations where employees are under pressure to constantly improve. However, in a lot of cases the employees do not immediately know how they are performing day-to-day as the measurements and KPIs are typically aggregated and presented to them periodically by analysts and managers.
Sometimes the stress of waiting to see how they performed is higher than the actual review itself. On the flip side, positive reinforcement every time they have a quick room turnover could be a great staff motivator.
Real time feedback on the day or weekly statistics can eliminate the stress of having to wait for the results. This is true for on time starts or meeting the department’s wait time goals.
>> See Patient Flow and Smart Data: Ideal Together
4. Benchmarks and Comparisons
Managers need to follow benchmarks.
Unfortunately, enterprise applications have not been great at providing benchmarks out of the box. Managers typically need to look these up or depend on consultants to provide benchmarks.
They need better information faster—and, eventually, peer comparison tools.
5. Education
Healthcare, just like any other field, is constantly evolving.
Providing easy links for education, for example on best practices for room turnover, or how room turnover can be divided into phases so each of them can be optimized separately can greatly help nurse leadership catch up on best practices.
Have Wearables Inspired the Design of Your Enterprise Applications?
For product development teams, it’s critical to draw inspiration from various sources. The exercise of comparing the usage of wearables with the TAGNOS application has been a valuable educative process. Let us know what you discover if you embrace a similar process.
Thanks for reading.
About TAGNOS
TAGNOS is the future of clinical automation software solutions with Artificial Intelligence. It is the only platform offering predictive analytics utilizing machine learning and RTLS. This groundbreaking platform leverages historical patient data continuously and adjusts operational intelligence to provide sustainable improvement to both the patient experience and metrics.
TAGNOS provides clinical systems integration, customizable reporting, dashboards, alerts, critical communication with staff and family to improve turnaround times. TAGNOS supports patient flow, workflow orchestration, and asset management.
In the course of 13 months, hospitals see a 12.7% reduction in its overall cycle time – saving an average of 40 minutes from each case and over $1.6M per year – more than 11x the typical investment.