Maternal healthcare App in Kenya
Making quality of care visible:
iDeliver, a digital tool that supports skilled birth attendants in delivering high quality intrapartum care
“A midwife spends on average half an hour per client on reporting”
The tablet based interface will help midwives and other care providers to oversee women throughout their stay in a maternity ward. A birth attendant will use the tool first to collect the data on a woman’s labour signs and her health conditions. iDeliver will generate a visualisation of this data, enabling a faster assessment and prioritisation of clients. The data collected will also help facilities and government officials to manage facilities better and drive improvement efforts.
BACKGROUND
Technology and connected systems hold immense promise for helping skilled birth attendants provide better, safer and more informed intrapartum care for mothers-to-be, yet digital products and services are typically designed primarily for high resource contexts. With the design of iDeliver, we’ve looked to combine high quality design and usability with a contextually appropriate and intuitive interface.
The tasks and activities skilled birth attendants perform in low resource settings are many and varied. A large component of a typical birth attendant’s working time is spent on collecting data about the client and reporting this information onwards to facility managers and e.g. government officials. Many facilities have a chronic shortage of staff and working hours are long. With too many clients to care for, nurses and midwives find it challenging to keep an eye on everything, to be able to prioritise their tasks, make referrals and other arrangements and take fast and informed decisions.
Through research and user testing we have identified five key areas how iDeliver will support the healthcare provider´s workflow:
1. Taking the right decision at the right time
iDeliver’s decision making support helps to identify clients’ risks and to support midwives’ decisions for a treatment. T
2. Organising care providers’ tasks
Every woman requires a personalised monitoring program to be able to receive individualised care. iDeliver can assist in defining the monitoring program and and to organise users’ activities towards an improved workflow.
3. Connecting the actors of the service ecosystem
iDeliver will facilitate an individual skilled birth attendant’s interaction with other actors in the client’s service journey, including both colleagues in the same facility as well as outside service providers.
4. Professional Development
iDeliver’s decision support tool is designed to strengthen the skills and knowledge of especially those at the beginning of their career.
5. Improving communication with clients
iDeliver aims to also promote awareness and education around quality of care.
The iDeliver User experience principles:
1. It’s alive!
“The interface changes based on what is happening”
“The interface shows me both the big picture and the small details”
2. My way
“I know my needs, I decide how to navigate towards a particular information”
“I’m the one in control, the service backtracks my decisions”,
“I am the owner of the tool”
3. One step ahead
“The service understands my needs and highlights information and actions that I might want to interact with”
“The service is ahead of time, always showing and reminding me of what’s next, what will happen now”
In addition to interaction and visual design considerations, the branding – that is, the feelings that the service should inflict in the user – is reflected in the communication style adopted by iDeliver: iDeliver is a reliable companion for a midwife and generates a feeling of professional pride and being the best version of one’s professional self. The copywriting is friendly, responsive and resilient. iDeliver does send notifications, but the copy is delivered in a gentle and encouraging manner. By being visible and present, iDeliver makes the work of midwives, nurses and other care providers visible as well.
Wrapped in a strong visual concept and a brand that tells a story, we hope that iDeliver will be a pathfinder of innovative design for clinical tools.
Technical Workings
The iDeliver program is lead by VecnaCares who have developed the software and provide a robust hardware component especially for digitally connected devices in resource constrained settings.
Project by M4ID
Client: Merck for Mothers
Design Team:
Design Lead: Veronica Bluguermann
Service and Interaction design: Promila Roychoudhury
Visual Design: Kallan & co
Technical Partners : Vecna Care
More info: Project link