Project Spotlight #2: Waterloo Paramedic Services (PSV)

Introduction

The Region of Waterloo Paramedic Services (PSV) is committed to providing excellent patient care and achieving it in the fastest possible time. Starting in January 2020, Blueprint has been building a web and mobile solution to solve some of the problems PSV has been facing.

The Problem

PSV is responsible for monitoring and responding during mass casualty events in Kitchener-Waterloo (KW). Mass casualty events are times when PSV expects to have a spike in casualties. Events like the Homecoming of both the local universities (University of Waterloo and Wilfrid Laurier University) and/or the annual St. Patrick’s Day where they could see 80–100 new patients per day.

The crucial part in the process of managing a mass casualty event is determining the priority of a patient’s treatment. This process is called patient triage and PSV had a workflow for this that was dependent on an expensive and non-customizable software application built for US firefighters. It got the job done (clearly) but there were large components of the app that didn’t meet the actual use case for PSV in the Waterloo Region.

So PSV wanted a new web and iPad app for patient triage that was customizable, easy to use, and would work around their existing logistical workflow, such as identifying and tracking new patients with a coloured wristband. Enter the Blueprint Paramedics Team 🚑

The Solution (so far)

The initial requirements that the team had to work with were:

• The app has to be customizable and accommodate PSV’s pre-existing workflow and not alter it.
• The first part of the app (patient triage) had to work on iPads used by PSV staff on the ground
• The second part of the app (patient transport) is initiated on the iPad and then the next step had to work as a web app used by PSV staff in a control centre

After identifying the initial requirements in a process we call Project Scoping, further requirements were discovered in a detailed process of asking questions to PSV, clarifying assumptions, and going through pain points. The Product Manager heads this process using tools like the MosCOW prioritization technique and whiteboarding.

This requirement analysis ends with a Statement of Work that details out all the solution is required to accomplish and is signed off by both partners.

After the Statement of Work, the team began development. We are now at the stage where we have a mass casualty incident management platform that supports the paramedics services workflow. The user experience (UX) of the app is specifically tailored to each team in PSV: the on the ground staff who need to add/remove patients and the control centre staff who need to view current patients and route them.

“It’s a fast paced environment, so the UX asks for many confirmations to prevent incorrect entries.” — Rishabh

Mark LeJeune (Supervisor, Operations, Alpha Platoon) from the Region of Waterloo Paramedic Services has given us very positive feedback:

As a result, we are expecting that the solution will have a launch date of January 2021!

What’s Next

As of December 2020, the app is going through some final testing and is looking for a release early next year.

As of January 2020, the team is working hard to wrap up the platform and successfully handoff the application to PSV. The team is also collaborating with PSV to help with onboarding and training new users post handoff.

Interested in Partnering with Blueprint?

If you are (or know of) a nonprofit that would be interested in partnering with Blueprint, we’d love to hear from you! Reach us at our web application here.

Article written by Narayan Subramoniam, Soha Khan, and Rishabh Bahri.