HealthTech: WalkyTalky
Because of the COVID-19 outbreak and its recent occurrence in the Netherlands, friends and family might soon be unable to visit patients in hospitals. Upon Reinier de Graaf's initiative, the idea is to set up an ad-hoc-project group made up of collaborators from multiple faculties and universities.
Stakeholders (Potential Users)
Since this lockdown will in its essence mean that patients will be reliant on online communication, our target users are the ones who cannot facilitate this themselves, i.e. those that do not have smartphones / tablets / etc. nor the knowledge of how to use them. These patients are also split into two groups capable of two levels of communication:
Synchronous: live-chat is possible and even preferred
Asynchronous: some patients are not in a healthy enough state to carry out full conversations with their friends and family at the time slot that the family chooses (an asynchronous solution needs to be devised)
Solution Outline
The current solution we are working on is built around Jitsi: an open-source conferencing software. We chose it based on the following requirements we determined that the meeting app / website must comply to:
- It must be self-hosted for GDPR compliance.
- It must be either free of charge or quite cheap, because of the budget.
- It preferably has some way for our service to communicate a password and room name to it.
Jitsi also has the added benefit of an already existing mobile app which can easily be downloaded into tablets. This app has the ability to import events from the in-built calendar of the device and to schedule Jitsi meetings based on them.
This combination of features gives us the solution on the patient's side of the story. For the family, there needs to be a user interface created to claim time slots and a whole system developed around that to manage the whole process with privacy (not allowing just anyone to contact a patient in the hospital).
Architecture
For this, the following architecture has been created:
---------------- -------------------
| Jitsi server | ----------- | Jitsi App / Web |
---------------- -------------------
| |
------------------------ | | -----------------------
| tablets w/ Jitsi app | ----- ----------- | time slot selection |
------------------------ -----------------------
| |
| ------------------- |
-------- | calendar server | -----------
-------------------- A nurse / helping hand carries the tablet around in the hospital based on the calendar that has been loaded into the device she is working on.
- A Jitsi server is set up per hospital along with a calendar server which provides ICS files through an iCal link.
- A user interface (web page) for families to claim time slots based on a token / username + password they received upon the patients entrance to the hospital. (Each patient has a contact person in their "file" and this would be the trustworthy one to receive the token. Afterwards, they could distribute it further to other friends and family.)
- The family can use either the app or the browser Jitsi UI on their side of the communication.
Jitsi Connection
Our application will have time slots to be selected by families. At the moment a family selects a time slot we setup two different URLs to be used in the future:
- The URL you could call 'the waiting room' which, for the family, shows as a basically empty page.
- The URL for use within the tablet, which will be clicked by the nurse / helping hand.
The first link will contain only information about what they are waiting for and when their time slot starts. The second link, when clicked within some time frame, will create a new Jitsi room and set a password for it.
The family will receive the ID of the created room through this waiting room web page and we can redirect them to a Jitsi page from there.
This way, the maintenance of the rooms stays on the hospital side of things and can be organized by them.
User Stories
Patient
Upon arrival to the hospital, a patient is asked whether they want to be added to the We\Visit system. If they agree, the admin adds them into the database of patients and keeps track of the area the patient is staying in throughout the whole stay in the hospital.
Their contact person then receives a personalized token to be able to claim time slots through the hospital's We\Visit website.
Admin
An admin is responsible for all the data in the database and keeping it updated. This includes:
- patient adding / editing / deleting
- area adding / editing / deleting
- tablet adding / editing / deleting
- time slot configuration per day (this can also be set as default for all days and kept on repeat)
Team Tablet
The Tablet Team is responsible for finding the correct patient that is scheduled next on the tablet they are manning. In the calendar app of the tablet, they open the next time slot, click the link and are redirected to the Jitsi app where they start the call.
Visitor
A Visitor opens the hospital's We\Visit website and inputs the token they received in the hospital. They can then:
- view the reserved time slots
- reserve a new time slot
- enter the waiting room to wait for the call initiated by the member of team tablet
Page Flow
To see the current page flow, click here.