Alleviating physician burnout through AI technology.
44% of physicians reported feeling burned out according to a 2019 report released by Medscape. Physician burnout is a rapidly growing problem in the healthcare industry with Physicians increasingly burdened with bureaucratic and administrative tasks, which takes focus away from patient care and quality of care.
A large hospital system was seeking an innovative approach to help streamline physician workflow utilizing AI-driven cognitive agent technologies.
My Role: Team Lead, Physician Interviews, Market Research, Empathy Mapping, Persona Development, Journey Mapping, Stakeholder and Partner Design Thinking Workshops, Storyboarding, Prototyping, and Value Proposition Development
Interviews with physicians and nurses were conducted by my team to gain a deeper understanding of a day-in-the-life, as well as main pain points. The market data was further underscored by our findings - physicians were no longer able to spend the time doing what they are passionate about because they are burdened by documentation requirements and patient visit time limits.
There were also additional insights emphasizing the importance and frustrations with keeping up with EHR entries for patients during and after visits. We were finding that some physicians would delay completing patient entries until the end of the day (often from home!) at the risk of forgetting key aspects of the visit.
We identified an opportunity to design a virtual physician assistant to help alleviate administrative tasks and streamline overall work flow. This design would utilize a cognitive agent through a partnership with a global leader in AI and cognitive technologies.
This solution would provide the physician with an interactive view of the details for their patient visits throughout the day. It would also enable transcription of patient notes with the ability to interface into the EHR system. At the conclusion of the physician’s day, the cognitive agent would have the ability to review the day and outstanding tasks, as well as expectations for the next day.
We developed low fidelity prototypes that led to wireframes and a clickable prototype to demonstrate the concept.