IT's End User Device and Design Lab Simplifies Clinical Planning
October 06, 2022
UH Clinical Update | October 2022
Planning clinical spaces like patient exam rooms or even an entire intensive care unit is an exercise in complex logistics. Pieces of clinical equipment must be located where they’ll be most helpful and efficient. Neglect even the smallest detail, and providers and their patients won’t have the kind of seamless and stress-free clinical encounter they both want. The stakes are high.
However, at UH, IT professionals are working to take some of the uncertainty out of clinical space planning – and saving money for the health system in the process. Housed at the corner of Cedar and MLK Boulevard in Cleveland, near Main Campus, their new IT End User Device and Design Lab allows clinicians to mock up walls, beds and various clinical systems to simulate exam rooms, hospital rooms and even operating rooms.
“This allows both clinicians and IT to experience and discuss various layouts to see what fits best in both current settings, as well as new build spaces,” says Chris Parvin, End User Computing Architect with IT.
Track Record of Success
Already, the IT lab has been used to help plan rooms in UH Ahuja Phase 2, as well as the Cardiothoracic Intensive Care Unit at UH Rainbow Babies & Children’s Hospital.
“We went through numerous iterations of these room layouts, and they gradually refined the placement of equipment and the placement of the beds, the ventilators and the other clinical equipment in the space,” says Parvin. “They were able to make some meaningful changes to the floor plans at a point in the project in which it didn't cost any money other than the architect's time. It was early enough on in the design process before walls were getting constructed, where they were able to test their interaction with the environments and make meaningful changes.”
Parvin also credits the IT lab with helping UH transition to Epic. Because providers will no longer be carrying laptops from exam room to exam room, the IT team needed to determine the best location for the computer in literally thousands of exam rooms. Ultimately, the IT lab helped identify five different computer placement options for providers to efficiently use.
Importance of Provider Engagement
Robert Eardley, Chief Information Officer at UH, highlights the key role providers play in this new effort.
“The interaction between the provider, the caregivers and the patient with the computing device in the rooms and in our spaces is extremely important to drive the efficiency and experience we are aspiring to achieve,” he says. “Details matter when it comes to design. Our design team seeks intensive guidance from our caregivers within our IT lab so that we can partner with our caregivers to design computing solutions that drive efficiency in clinical practice. Our IT lab, which we sometime refer to as our usability lab, allows for this interactive design philosophy. We believe the outcomes of this effort will result in design configurations that drive efficiency while being simple and intuitive to use.”
High-tech Option
For clinical teams that can’t conveniently travel to Main Campus, the IT lab will soon be offering a virtual option – augmented reality (AR). Akin to shopping virtually for furniture, AR allows UH staff to view virtual representations of standard IT equipment such as WOWs and wall-mounts right in their practices and exam rooms. The equipment being virtually presented via AR is displayed in a 1:1 proportionately accurate manner, so it is still possible to understand the space the virtual equipment occupies.
“We’re able to create a virtual representation of various clinical and IT tools, then place them in a space to see if they will fit in a particular workflow,” Parvin says. “Doing this allows construction teams to see how we plan to use the space in a way previously very difficult and expensive to render. The synergies between IT and clinical are fusing in a way previously impossible to do without this technology, allowing us to essentially test before walls are up.”
Parvin says he hopes more UH clinicians will take advantage of what the IT End User Device and Design lab has to offer.
“Vendors say they don't know anybody else who’s taking this approach to design,” Parvin says. “Our methods are pretty unique in healthcare.”