InstantHelpFinder

Ionic - MockUp
Use case scenario
User flow chart
Use and test cases

Inspiration

Problem description: Corona patients recover best in prone position. However, it takes 4-5 caregivers to rotate the patients about every few hours. Special solutions (e.g. pillows or mattresses) to improve positioning and reduce complications are needed. In addition, solutions for reducing the required manpower and improving organization of prone positioning would have a great impact on the workload of healthcare workers.

InstantHelpFinder is a progressive web app (PWA) build with JHipster to create agile work plannings at intensive care units (ICUs) dealing with COVID-19 patients that need to be prone positioned.

The app is a subproject of the research initiative relieve the prone position process at HelpfulETH. The project was initiated by doctors and nurses at a Swiss hospital. The app aims to satisfy their needs as best and quick as possible.

The solution we bring to the table

The timeline for developing InstantHelpFinder has been very short. After clarifying the project requirements our goal has been to implement all functionalities within three or four weeks without compromising in security and scalability of the project. Therefore we picked a monolithic architecture generated with JHipster with an angular front-end. This provided us with state of the art technologies out of the box such as:

Front-end testing tools like Karma and Protractor
Back-end testing tools like JUnit and Gatling
Internationalization
Security tools such as Spring Security and others
ORM tools such as Hibernate
Liquibase as a version control tool for the database
CI/CD options such as GitLab CI
Docker for easy deployment at hospitals

The WebApp is fully responsive and can therefore be used on mobile devices as well.

1. Requirements.

Category	Implemented
Notifications	In progress
User profile	Yes
Overview of scheduled (accepted) turning events	In progress
Details of scheduled / accepted turning events	Yes
Overview of pending open requests	Yes
Details of request	Yes
Create new request	Yes
Send request to available doctors	Yes
Send request fo available nurse / assistance	Yes
Create an accepted (definite ) turning event	Yes
Daily turning schedule from PDMS	No
Personal turning schedule	In progress
Availability of user on personal schedule	Yes
Emergency turning event	In progress

You find the following as .png images in the image gallery. Some were prepared in German, we apologize for this.

2. Use case scenario.

3. User flow chart.

4. Use and test cases.

The solutions input on the crisis

Now and still in the next months, a shortage of medical staff is expected, especially in the intensive care unit (ICU) due to more incoming patients who have to be ventilated. Bottlenecks of the medical staff are expected.

Turning COVID-19 patients into prone position requires an unusual high amount of health-care workers. Since every turning has to be supervised by a doctor/ anesthetist, the process puts a particularly high pressure on the medical staff. It is important that we relieve the medical staff from as much organizational work as possible.

It is the medical staff at COVID-19 ICUs that are most important in this crisis and that work the hardest. Relieving them from some (even if little) of their work is the minimum we must do!

InstantHelpFinder tries to relieve the medical staff at ICUs from a particularly difficult organizational work. We therefore expect its impact on the crisis as very high

Troubles we ran into

Using JHipster comes with the drawback that it is difficult to master. It is difficult to recruit developers familiar with this framework.

We ourselves had some trouble with Liquibase and had to set up the project a second time to solve this.

What we have done during the weekend

We did some tweaking of the front-end and solved the Liquibase problem mentioned above. You find this fix on the reset-jh-project branch on our GitLab repository.

What is necessary to continue this project

The earlier InstantHelpFinder can go life, the better. We all do this project besides our regular work or during our holidays. To be more responsive to the needs, it would be good if we would have some full-stack developers working on it full-time for some weeks.

What's next for InstantHelpFinder

A first Prototyp is supposed to go life in the coming weeks at one of Switzerlands biggest Hospitals. We would also like to provide an additional Ionic Frontend for better user experience.