Hospital Buddy, mock up
Hospital Buddy, guidance
Hospital Buddy, Hello!
Hospital Buddy, program for Covid-19 patients.
Hospital Buddy, sample page
Hospital Buddy, sample page
Hospital Buddy, sample page

Hospital Buddy

The problem your project solves

Issues reported by medical staff were that patients felt isolated and alone with limited contact from others. The contact they did have with staff was restricted as they struggled to identify and communicate with their carers through heavy PPE. They suffered from stress and loneliness of isolation with long hours of inactivity for days. Patients commonly would struggle to retain information about their daily care plan, their progress and any questions they had for the medical team during the brief ward round.

The solution we bring to the table

We believe that during this crisis, time is what matters. There are patients struggling with loneliness right now. We brought a ready to use workbook, which can be implemented at the moment's notice!

We created a solution for the multi-faceted problem of patient well-being during the coronavirus outbreak. Patients are left alone with their thoughts, and the idea is to uplift their spirits. The tool we have created serves a major purpose: to reduce stress levels in hospitalized Covid patients.

Our approach was to demystify the disease, provide daily activities for stress management, to match expectations with treatment plans and provide a new channel of daily communication between the medical team and the patient. Our goal was to change the focus from treating a viral pneumonia to a patient centred approach, giving them agency over their care. Ultimately to reduce stress and improve outcomes.

We were inspired by modern day apps to encourage regular participation to improve mental health. Because we felt there were limitations due to time and medical legal consequences and patient accessibility with an app, we decided to create a PDF template that would be accessible to all patients within Europe now. Our solution encompasses all age groups.

This will be a living document. Hospitals across Europe will be able to convert it to their native languages and add or remove any elements they feel appropriate to their particular service.

As a low cost solution, hospitals are able to print this small booklet for the patient to keep at their bedside. Serving as their own personal care workbook.

How we built it

This is a simple PDF file which can be copied. We used Canvas software to create the graphic design and the video.

The solution’s impact to the crisis

With the Covid -19 pandemic there are so many unknowns. We would like to take a patient by the hand and assure him/her that someone is still watching over them even if they are not present on the bedside at all times. It uplifts the morale of the patients but also the medical team. It opens the communication between patients, doctors and nurses. We believe that a patient who is well informed and actively taking part in their treatment is much calmer. We would like to create bridges whenever possible.

What you have done during the weekend

There are six team members in our group and each of us brings a different skill set to the team. For the last two days we have focused on finding the solution for some of the challenges that the health care systems in Europe are facing during the COVID-19 outbreak.

There are two doctors in our team working in two different countries. While comparing the measures taken in our hospitals during the pandemic, we have tried to find a common problem that COVID -19 pandemic has caused in both of our heath care systems which has not been addressed so far.

We have established that the mutual problem that both, the Polish and the UK health care systems, have is the tremendous isolation that COVID-19 patients go though in the hospital being separated from their families. As well as even greater than ever difficulties to establish good communication between patients and healthcare personnel. We have done research to find out if other countries are facing similar challenges. We have discovered that there are already research articles published in China about how lonely, isolated and disorientated COVID-19 patients felt while staying in hospital and that it may threaten their mental well-being. We have decided that this is going to be our challenge!

The brainstorm to find a solution to tackle this has started. Here is where the rest of the team with their diverse skills and backgrounds made their major contribution. Having the business continuity and recovery specialist along with the customer success executive, the service designer and the brain scientist enabled us to designed a tool which is cost efficient, easy to access and ready to use right away.

The necessities in order to continue the project

Our workbook is a living document. It can be implemented tomorrow. It can be easily edited. It requires access to the Internet to download the file and a printer to print out of the pages. We already asked a few hospitals if they would be interested in obtaining such a document and the feedback was extremely positive. We are ready to keep the product alive and develop it further.

Business plan

Our Beta version is ready to use. In order to create a full product - we would need to involve various interpreters to be able to distribute the workbook to each European country. In order to achieve product excellence we would need to consult:

Therapists
Graphic designers
Lawyers
Medical consultants
Copy writers and so on.

Free beta version is available here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Ac6lIBIrWgavuAHd-r7hJem8rCbkksHq/view

We estimate that full product with many more more features would cost around: 12000 euros.

We have unlimited ways of spreading the word about the product such as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter etc. We can easily approach all the European health care systems through .... The plan is to market the solution to few hospitals, and use them as trial "customers". We would love to gather feedback and make our workbook even better. What is important, our solution is easily scalable and expandable. There is a lot of potential with its content.

The next steps would be to create similar solutions, for patients in quarantine, patient's families, medical stuff etc. We are ready to create an application based on the paper version. We can also prepare a website. Application available on iOS and Android would cost around 30000 euro.

The value of your solution after the crisis

Since the product is a low cost solution it will not waste any resources while not in use. Alternatively it has the potential to be changed into generic file for different patients ex. diabetics, maternity etc.

Credits: Videvo