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Countries like India have a range of cities formed based upon the economics and growth, largely into Tier 1 (Urban Areas/Metro Cities), Tier 2(Semi-Urban areas) & Tier 3(Rural areas). Philips internal white paper’s research says that for every 85 Million population there are 4Lakhs doctors available in Tier 2 / Urban areas and 5300 intensivists who are board-certified physicians and surgeons who provide specialized care for critically ill patients in an ICU which enables the high clinical expertise with prevalent high standards of healthcare hence results into world-class ICU outcomes. In Tier 2 location the ratio is depressing in Semi-urban areas where for every 200 Million population there are only 1.5L doctors and an Adhoc way access to Intensivists, results in mediocre healthcare and high mortality rate. Tier 3 lacks complete clinical expertise and even the necessary infrastructure for ICU Care.

Philips Intellispace Consultative Critical Care provides access to expertise in semi urban/rural India to improve clinical outcomes. Philips ICCC is a tele-monitoring solution to enable 24X7 monitoring of peripheral ICUs from a central command center. Unlike conventional tele-medicine solutions, ICCC presents vital patient information such as history, live feeds from bedside monitors, and other devices.

The Proof of Concept was created by Philips Research and Engineers, Design was supposed to tailor-make the task flows and improve its user-experience. Discussions with Dr. Kumara Sanjaya, Lead Clinical Specialist and Product Manager at Philips helped in understanding the context and challenges in a traditional tele-monitoring setup. He also enabled an opportunity to meet Intensivist to understand their day to day life.

Dr. Pramod, with 10 years experience in treating critically ill patients, provides his tele-monitoring services at a command center based in Mumbai. He needs to monitor several patients in ICUs across India, and also needs to be available if any caregiver requires assistance. Traditionally he uses physical printouts of patient data, reports, and scans to provide his guidance but in ICU care time and up-to-date data are the key for making any decision.

Dr. Pramod, would like to provide his expertise to patients in both tier-I and tier-II locations. However, given the physical distances and the time available to him, he finds it nearly impossible. Dr Pramod would like to receive reliable patient data but has to trust the local staff at remote locations.

Few challenges highlighted and insights observed were;

1. Navigating to the right patient through a large number of ICU’s pan India,

2. Need for a formal virtual rounding mechanism to ensure Critical Patients are getting follow up and nobody is missed.

3. Need for monitoring all patients across all ICU in a single glance, vitals charts from last 12h or 24h.

The solution was co-created with customers and validated stringently by clinical experts to ensure regulatory compliance. ICCC extends beyond the command center to reach the mobile devices of intensivists who are on the move, enabling them to stay connected with patients at all times.

Dr. Pramod now manages workflows for virtual rounding, Electronics health records, and real-time clinical data are represented intuitively with high granularity. Seamless connectivity to bedside medical devices and high definition audio-video feeds enhance the overall experience. A responsive solution is also available for the tablet which is called mobile consultative care which acts as a secondary monitoring device while he is traveling.

A typical design delivery process which I try to follow is shown here but its always challenge to follow the ideal process. Each project demands a tailor made process as project timelines, access to users and access for customer/user data which can help and enable design is not always there. Such activity is indicated in Gray bullet points which is not done in the overall process

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