SMARAGD

Despite the difficulties the project team faced due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, fieldwork has been successfully carried out in three research sites. The subsequent analyses defined the information needs of occupational and physiotherapists, as well as user requirements for the intelligent extraction, analysis and aggregation of patients’ health data, as well as their visualisations.

Fieldwork was conducted in three research sites – hospitals in St. Pölten, Linz, and Graz. The partners followed at three-fold methodological approach: First, 13 telephone interviews were carried out. Initially planned as a substitute in case the pandemic prevents research in the hospitals, partners used them as a complement to the other two steps taken. Second, participant observation and focus groups were conducted more or less in parallel.

Why all these different methods? They will help the project team to get a full picture of the information needed to fulfil the project’s goal: Participant observation was used to explore what information is relevant to occupational and physiotherapists in therapeutic decision-making and how this information is obtained in conversation with patients and with the help of available information from the HIS. Focus groups, as well as telephone interviews, aimed to identify the form of presentation of the information from electronic health data of patients required by occupational and physiotherapists (in the original, in aggregated or in visualised form), in order to be able to define the requirements of the users for the technical components. All of these steps contribute to the goal of the project to support occupational therapists and physiotherapists in their daily work in the long run by providing an intelligent aggregation and visualisation of information from electronic health data of patients and information in the hospital information system based on their needs.

Outcomes: information needs & user requirements

The ethnographic semantic analysis identified primary and secondary domains of information search and decision-making. Primary and secondary domains have been defined, primary describing the relevant information for therapeutic decision-making, and secondary the forms of searching for this information, especially in the hospital information system (HIS) and via the therapeutic conversation. Primary domains refer directly to the relevant information for decision-making. Secondary domains refer to the search for this information in the context of the occupational and physical therapist’s work situation.

This analysis is complemented by the telephone interviews, which describe information acquisition and needs of the therapists as asked for in retrospective. Together with the content analysis of the focus groups, they shed light on the documents needed (e.g., diagnoses, post-treatment guidelines), as well as challenges and an assessment of HIS support for decisions. In a nutshell, physiotherapists and occupational therapists first need information about the operations or treatments: what was done and when. Furthermore, they need to know whether and to what extent the operated parts of the body may be exercised and/or moved. Post-treatment guidelines usually provide information on this. However, they do not always find the information on the operation in the HIS; sometimes, they have to contact the doctors authorised to make decisions or need to look up this information elsewhere (e.g., decourses). Therapists see a need especially for information about the situation of patients after discharge, about their living, working and family situation. This information is often only rudimentarily available in the HIS and is usually requested from the patients.

Based on these outcomes, SYNYO defined user stories to define the user requirements. These will be prioritised according to the MoSCoW method, a method of agile development prioritising requirements in Must have, Should have, Could have and Won’t have. Then, first visualisations in the form of paper sketches, wireframes and mock-ups will be designed and subsequentially tested.

Links

https://www.smaragdprojekt.at/

Keywords

User requirements, occupational therapists, physiotherapists, information needs, electronic health data, interviews, ethnographic semantics, focus groups