How MedSitter’s User Design Improves Patient Safety

Good UX design feels natural to end users, and MedSitter's user interface was designed specifically to reduce sitter fatigue and improve patient safety.

Patient observation software is a technology-enabled solution that connects at-risk patients to remote observers over audio/video. Armed with a mobile cart, cameras, and two-way audio/video connections, one observer can watch multiple patients at once. Patient observation software is the key to helping strained nursing staff.

Without MedSitter, when a patient is in need of a sitter—due to intrinsic factors such as advanced age, or extrinsic factors such as slippery surfaces—that means that one sitter has to sit in a room with one patient, to supervise and prevent a negative outcome for the patient. This, however, strains resources within the nursing department.

With a patient observation system like MedSitter, one sitter can be transformed into ten. A sitter at a command center can observe ten patients on one monitor, thus putting less strain on the overworked nursing department. One person can do what ten sitters used to have to do, all with our specific MedSitter UX design.

What is UX and Why is it Important?

User experience is how a person feels when interacting with a system of any kind. In our case, that system is our patient observation software. Those who work on UX (called UX designers) study and evaluate how users feel about a system, looking at things such as ease of use, perception of the value of the system, utility, efficiency in performing tasks, and so forth.

So, why is this important for MedSitter? MedSitter was designed for clinicians by a dedicated development team that worked in close proximity with RNs and CCRNs. We wanted to create—and want to continually improve—our system for the observers. Things like large screen sizes, how easy it is to sound an alarm, night vision, and so much more, are just a few aspects we’ve looked into, to make a great user experience for our sitters.

The Results

When Paul Rouillard, MedSitter’s in-house UX expert, designed MedSitter he took ergonomics, screen size, central/peripheral viewing areas, and observer fatigue into consideration. The MedSitter software features one large interaction zone and ten smaller video feeds which make up the monitoring zone. Motion detection alerts the observer if there is motion in any video feed, and it is very simple for the observer to switch out which patients are in the interaction zone at any given time.

The result is increased patient safety, and increased satisfaction amongst both patients and observers.

To learn more about the expertise behind MedSitter’s UX design, download this complimentary white paper by Paul Rouillard.

Upcoming Webinar: MedSitter’s User Design Improves Patient Safety

In an upcoming complimentary presentation, Paul Roulliard, MedSitter’s Director of User Experience, will discuss the strategy behind his software design and how that design directly impacts patient care.

We are also providing a free lunch delivery at the time of the presentation to everyone that registers. Register for the webinar here!