Virtual scribes as a Service to Enrich Medical Staff Performance
The Problem
Have you ever thought about how much time and energy doctors spend documenting each patient's medical record? Time is money, and when it comes to doctors, time can also save someone's life.
EHRs have increased rather than decreased the burden of paperwork. Insurance and governmental laws have made the issue more challenging.
The idea behind CuraScribe was to give clinicians more time back.
The Solution
We designed and built CuraScribe's web and mobile platform.
This medical platform connects physicians with virtual scribes that digitally document each medical appointment, helping doctors save time and focus entirely on the patient's health.
The app scribes safely store all confidential information as EHRs and government and insurance regulations are all left in the hands of the virtual writers.
Tech Stack
Process & Workflow
Light-it was involved in the project from the early stages, helping the client ideate and validate its technical specifications, which we subsequently developed.
Our team worked side-by-side with CuraScribe to figure out a roadmap. We got full hands-on product validation, UX/UI design, and development based on the roadmap and goals established.
The project had three main stages:
CuraScribe required extensive research and ideation to be able to define and validate the user flows, the MVP, and a sharp outline.
The final product includes the following components:
- iOS app where medical providers create encounters by recording patients.
- Windows app and Chrome Extension to capture the foot pedal commands while transcribing in a Microsoft Word doc.
- Web platform where the scribes and managers work the whole day.
After defining the backlog and roadmap, and absorbing all the information, we began designing.
Our team planned, sketched, and repeated until we had a sharp wireframe.
The primary purpose was to optimize users' time; this left no space for distracting visuals, low-speed, or time-consuming animations. The simpler, the better.
This resulted in a minimalist and highly intuitive UI, friendly to work with for long hours and visually appealing.
The Agile development process was divided into 2-week sprints.
The team consisted of two developers, one PM, one UX/UI Designer, a DevOps, a QA Engineer, and a HIPAA Compliance expert.
The team brought the product to life and kept the clients updated throughout the process, starting with the MVP, testing it, and continuously iterating.
This stage was followed by ongoing maintenance to sustain continuous improvement and care for the quality of the product.
The scribes and managers work the entire day on the web platform. In this platform, they receive and assign the encounters, play the audio files, manage users, see attachments, and more.
The mobile application is where medical providers create encounters by recording patients and filling in a brief form. It's also where doctors can review the information once it has been transcribed.
Doctors record each consultation using CuraScribe's mobile app on their phones and uploading them to the platform, along with some required information. Then, each encounter is automatically assigned to a virtual scribe, a medical expert that transcribes the consult on the web platform and uploads it to the patient's medical record.
Technical challenges
Innovation: This first web-based transcription full-service platform naturally had to be highly usable and intuitive for all: doctors, clinics, and scribes. Also, it had to be fully extensible so that they could onboard other transcription companies in the future.
Compatibility: Our solution had to be compatible with the pedal, covering all the edge cases. The foot pedal POC was solved by building a Chrome extension and a Windows app.
HIPAA Compliance: The HIPAA sets national standards for safeguarding patient health data; every healthcare solution must adress it to protect the privacy and security of PHI.
Security: The audio files' information is extremely sensible and indispensable. The platform had to be 100% reliable and safe, so we covered numerous edge cases to guarantee this.
Results
Medical providers using CuraScribe can now see 42% more patients on average in the same schedule.
Doctors can now focus 100% on the patient, which results in more successful and fruitful encounters.
Patients' medical experiences and attention improved at least by 35%, according to final feedback.
Clinics are 40% more effective and organized with EMRs and schedules, which impacts the revenue and staff & patient satisfaction.
