Predictive Modelling Tool

Introduction

In the scenario where a patient requires care beyond the hospital setting, they often transition to an Alternate Level of Care (ALC) destination such as Long-Term Care. This transition, however, presents several challenges. Patient experience is marked by uncertainty in the discharge process, coupled with extended waiting times. Our objective was to enhance this ALC discharge journey by introducing a Predictive Modeling Tool. This tool would foresee potential discharge destinations and estimate the anticipated length of stay for each patient, streamlining the process for all stakeholders involved.

Project Details

The 8-month duration of our project journey can be effectively segmented into the subsequent stages:

• Understanding the ALC Process: We embarked on comprehensive interviews with medical professionals from SJHH (St. Joseph's Healthcare Hamilton), not solely to grasp the ALC process intricacies, but also to understand the distinct conditions guiding patients to specific ALC destinations. To ensure precision in our understanding and to ask pertinent questions, we translated the entire process into a MatLab Simulation Model incorporating logic gates.
• Stakeholder and User Insights: While a multitude of stakeholders were involved, our primary focus lay on Patients and Hospital Administrations as target users.
• Synthesizing Design Research: Our approach encompassed engaging with patients, medical professionals, and Hospital Management to uncover pain points and accumulate valuable insights.
• Iterative Prototyping: Along with stakeholder interviews, we initiated the creation and continuous refinement of prototypes to parallelly inform them our design process and get their feedback.
• Final Deliverables: We presented the culmination of findings to our professors and Stakeholders from SJHH. This included an enhanced ALC discharge journey map alongside a Low-Fidelity wireframe for a Mobile App. This app is envisioned to provide patients with data on possible waiting times and discharge destinations within the ALC framework.