Treatment calendar

Improve the patient therapy calendar for staff and patients

Cancer treatment for a child spans over months, if not years. Moreover, it can change several times in a short period of time based on the patient’s condition. The previous process for updating the patient’s copy of the treatment plan lead to unnecessary mistakes, which caused confusion and uncertainty for families.

In collaboration with the CBDI, the LWC team enhanced the communication to patient’s and families, providing a more holistic solution and improving the cancer journey experience for stakeholders.

Live Well Team
1 Faculty Advisor
2 Graduate Students
1 Visiting Scholar
3 Fellows
1 Co-Op

CBDI Team
Multidisciplinary Clinical Team

The digital treatment calendar on a laptop

2019 DMI Design Value Award Winner

2020 Innovative Health Projects Honorable Mention

A person using the digital treatment calendar on their laptop

The paper version of the treatment calendar

PROJECT GOALS

Previously, patients were given a paper copy of their treatment plan in the form of a calendar, but it did not provide sufficient information for families and was inefficient for the care teams to create and manage.

BY THE NUMBERS

Families

Three families provided feedback on the proposed ideas for the treatment calendar. Key takeaways were that having more information is better

Components Outlines

The LWC team outlined five components for the patient therapy plan and designed the interface for three of those components.

What We Did
Interviewing
Benchmarking
Survey Tool
Prototyping
User Testing
UX/UI Design

Opportunity areas were identified and refined through building upon concepts from previous research

Insights pulled from conducting in-depth professional interviews, and facilitating feedback sessions with parents and care managers

OUTCOME

The LWC team created a new system for the updated calendar, which included two provider portals and three patient/parent portals living in a website on the Cincinnati Children’s server called, ETCH (Electronic Treatment Calendar Hub)

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The team designed three distinct interfaces: Patient-Specific Protocol, Read Only Calendar, and Family Printout.
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System Overview: The LWC team outlined five components for the patient therapy plan and designed the interface for three of those components.
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Patient-Specific Protocol: The interface allows providers to select the template corresponding to the treatment plan the patient will be following, and then customize that template for the patient specifically.
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Family Print Out and Read Only Calendar: Providers can print a hard copy for the family and patient. Families also have access to this information online.
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IMPACT
Currently all patients are provided with a printed copy of their calendar from ETCH and are given the information allowing them to log in to the patient/parent portal where they can view an updated versions of their calendar within 5 business days of any changes.
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In the future we hope to have ETCH interface with both Epic and MyChart to allow a seamless transfer of information and update the patient calendar in real time.
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Another long term goal is for ETCH to interface with an electronic pill box that helps families and the care team better track medication adherence.