Cora

Duration: 5 weeks

Collaboration partner:

A team project made during a collaborative course called Hot Team where students from different disciplines (we had a chef in our team) are aimed to explore team building techniques while working with a design case.

Our group got asked to come up with a concept for remote monitoring of heart failure patients. The project was closely proceeded with a team of doctors from Region Västerbotten.

Jump directly to result

Task:

How might we improve the home monitoring for heart failure patients?

Teammates:
Lisa Selin (me), Mohammed Aldulaymi, Jungbin Jung, Oscar Olsson, Niklas Andreasen, Björn Norén

My role:

Besides the general design process, I was in charge of logo making, colors, UI, ideation workshop, and keeping a good group spirit with morning mediation

Research participants:

7 patients

5 nurses

2 doctors

1 survey

*65 answers

Discovering:

Home & hospital visits

Desktop & literature readings

Market research

Technology research

Structured interviews

Roleplay

Journey mapping

Analyse & mapping

Creating stories

Creating personas

Defining:

Heart failure is an anachronic, incurable,

& possibly fast progressional condition. Basically, the heart can not keep up with its workload and the body misses out on necessary blood circulation and oxygen.

*level of disease 1-4.

Symtoms:

Exhaustion

Breathing difficulties

Danger!

Dizziness & confusion

If the patients don't react to the symptoms it can lead to deadly conditions:

Water in the lungs

Loss of appetite

Swollen legs

Routines living with heart failure:

Once a year people living with heart failure get contacted by the hospital to come a do health check-up. Every other day it's up to the patient to do daily checkups.

They are weighting themselves to discover any sudden weight gain due to water accumulation. Monitoring their blood pressure, oxygen level, ECG and temperature. They also have to take the right amount of medicine at the right time, which can be up to 40 pills spread out 5 times a day.

The patient should by themselves journal their health status and if they are worried about any condition they need to seek contact with the hospital.

Main pain points:

Stress & anxiety

Many patients are worried about their health and feel that their family is worried too. That the family worries that their loved one isn't checking their health regularly can be frustrating for everyone involved.

Life quality

Some patient doesn't consider themself as sick, while others feel that their sickness is restraining their whole life

Disturbing equipment

Many of the patients experience their home monitoring equipment as disturbing and dislikable to use. Some patients have found ways of hiding them in their living spaces.

Detecting worsening

Some anxious patients go to the hospital too often, while others do not detect or call for help when a worseninged condition is developed.

Engagement

Some patient doesn't do regular health check-ups at home, some monitor and journal daily

Medicine distribution

The patients are sometimes taking the wrong pills at the wrong times and often the wrong amount of pills is being distributed because the patient daily health can vary due to exercise, sleep temporary sickness, etc. This causes the patient to daily take little or too many different medicines with its possible side-effects.

Chosen direction:

The concept should focus on reducing stress

& increase life quality for the patients using

the monitoring service

Developing:

Co-creation

Sketching

CMF-inspiration

Mockups

User testing

Group ideation

I hosted some workshops to kick off our ideation

Cora result

Delivering final concept:

- Manuel Gonzales Garcia, Doctor

"Cora would be a

life-changing device for our heart failure patients"

Welcome to Cora

Cora is a remote monitoring system making life easier for people living with heart failure patients. The service combines a less obtrusive interactive home base with a wearable, all connected to a motivating and supporting system with a continuous contact between the patient and the doctor.

The base takes care of correct medication regulation and dispensing at home, while the wearable takes care of analyzing the patient’s state of health at all times. Both units work closely together and share the same cloud. Cora enables the hospital to create a more accurate clinical picture of the patient, provide the best care, reduce stress for the patient and their loved ones, and to detect and intervene in case of imminent danger.

Photo: The physical model handmade for exhibition

Cora favours: