The Facilitate system is a multimedia technology system designed to deliver relevant content during and post patient visits. The purpose of this system is to “facilitate” both patient and clinician experience in the exam room. More specifically, this system is designed to communicate with and educate patients during wait-time, without taking up staff resources.  It also is a tool that clinicians can use to immediately access visuals to help explain a condition or procedure to a patient. All information viewed, whether patient-selected or clinician-selected, can also be made available to a patient for reference once back at home (or away from the office).

Proof of Concept Prototype

The first prototype (slide 2) was created to tell the story of the  Facilitate system for testing. The sketches depicted various scenarios where the system could be used in clinician offices. An accompanying script was read by the interviewer while browsing through the sketches. After script was finished a card sorting exercise was administered to collect insight on the perceived importance of the system in the various scenarios.

Discovery Prototype

The role of the second prototype (slide 1) was to create a technical prototype to further define the role of the product through the eyes of the various stakeholders and gather insight on the desired experience before significant time and money is invested in Prototype 2. This was accomplished by creating a portable hardware (and software) solution that can be brought to various sites to mimic the desired experience for testing and observation. While creating the impression with testers that the system is a functioning user interface, the depth of content, options, and database access is limited or non-existent on the back-end of the solution.

Based the on the findings from the Proof of Concept Prototype and jobs-based research it was determined that an experience manipulated by a remote control would be the most familiar to greatest number of users. Hardware was selected to create an affordable and ergonomic system.

The final Discovery Prototype had both a clinician mode and patient mode. Patients used the system to answer questions, which were logged in their profile and dictated the content available to them.

The clinician mode allowed the physician to use media to aid in the exam and select media to be emailed to the patient for home viewing.

Field Testing

The Discovery Prototype is currently being brought to physicians onsite to better understand how the system integrates with the typical workflow.