Patient self-registration : Design of a digital tool for an emergency department

Abstract: In this bachelor thesis, a prototype of a digital tool is designed, aimed at self-registering patient data in an emergency ward. Normally, patients not arriving by ambulance are treated in the order they enter the waiting room. Nurses performing the first examination—a triage—must ask the patient about their identity, previous medical history and similar questions, and enter this data into a new treatment case in the healthcare information system. It has been suggested that having the patient enter this data themselves would be beneficial, allowing nurses to concentrate on the medical issues. After gathering and analyzing data from observations and from interviews with the staff at a Swedish hospital, a prototype of a digital tool was designed, where patients step-by-step could enter the required data in the waiting room, thus saving valuable time in the triage. Benefits for the patient include receiving feedback about the number of persons ahead in line. The prototype was received favorably by test persons and by the staff, indicating that it could work as a model for a product to be put into work use.