020_Corona-Testprozesse_digitales-Wartezimmer

ID 0557 - The Digital Waiting Room is a centralized, scalable solution for participants to apply for COVID-19 testing based on continuous risk evaluation.

Comment 4

Inspiration

We observed both in the direct family environment as well as through social media contacts, which difficulties patients face when seeking treatment or testing. Despite strong sympthoms, such as clearly audible breathing difficulties during the telephone call with a doctor, it was often not possible to find an appointment. The patients were referred to the hotline of the public health department by their family doctor and then returned. At this point we would like to offer support with an online portal.

What it does

A 'digital waiting room' or a 'digital consultation hour' is intended to save patients hours of phone calls back and forth. At the same time, it can relieve the workload of receptionists and health authority staff.

Based on the CovApp, a questionnaire was drawn up, taking into account the information provided by the Robert Koch Institute, to determine the severity of the illness and also source some additional personal data. Prioritisation enables patients with urgent treatment needs to make appointments more quickly – without having to contact their doctor by phone. For developping the process of prioritisation we joined up with Team CorChain and Patient Prioritisation (https://devpost.com/software/optimization-of-corona-test-assignment-using-blockchain) and helped each other to improve this further. Our frontend now provides all the necessary information for an effective priorization.

Based on the information given by the patient, appointments and COVID-19 tests will be arranged. If a patient's state of health deteriorates, he or she can indicate this on a repeated visit to the digital waiting room and a new prioritisation will take place.

The platform is intended to be an uncomplicated and easily accessible contact point for people of all ages.

Challenges we ran into

Keeping everyone on the same page, while not in the same room, way probably the biggest challenge. Having Discord for voice communication was extremely helpful. Some of us dedicated a lot of their time to keeping us all on track – which worked well, but did obviously cost time.

Choosing a tech stack is challenging in a group of people who never worked together before. But – as always, the internet is full of solutions.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Working together with some random guys on the internet can be chaotic. But it wasn't. Everyone was focused, professional and supportive. We built a working team and a good atmosphere right from the start. And that is something we can be proud of.

Also we managed to connect three different teams during the Hackathon. Through the collaboration and the input of Moderators we were able to break down boundaries of the teams and build one cohesive and future oriented concept. We managed to combine our user-centric frontend design the Digital Waiting Room ("Digitales Wartezimmer") and their enabler blockchain and the developped overarching prioritisation of future scenarios to deal with the pandemic.

What we learned

Defining the scope is paramount for such a small timeframe. Other groups, we discovered, are working on the same challenge, but with different focuses. By combining our strengths in the coming weeks, we can build a working solution for the real world.

What's next

Backoffice application for administrative staff to finally process the collected data and arrange a medical examination. Implementation of a ticketing logic that assigns an appointment to the patients according to the severity of their illness. This sequence can also be flexibly adapted and re-prioritised if the sympthoms change.

How we built it

Workflow Development:

  1. Definition of scope based on criteria
  2. Selection of tech-stacks and definition of teams (front- & backend, backoffice)
  3. Implementation & lots of communication

Workflow Prioritisation:

  1. Sandbox of criteria to prioritise patients based on four categories
  2. Alignment with different teams to get requirements of different use cases
  3. Build cohesive parameter logic to calculate four scores
  4. Exchange parameter logic with partner teams to make sure the data in-flow is workable for the blockchain and in consequence for the whole ecosystem

Check out the project group on Gitlab

IX / UI Design

Frontend

  • React.js app with Typescript
  • API integration via Axios
  • Material-UI for some design components

Backend

  • Written in Python
  • REST API provided with flask
  • MongoDB as data storage

Backoffice

  • Angular app with Typescript
  • Material Design library for tables & other components
  • CoreUI library for navigation

Deployment

  • TBD with Docker & K8s

Communication

  • Slack (whole Hackathon)
  • Discord (internal)

Built With

+ 9 more
Share this project:

Updates