As mentioned in the previous progress report, we gave the Vanderbilt NICU staff a survey pertaining to their thoughts on the trial and their thoughts on a tracking system as a whole. After discussing the results with Dr. Walsh and Dr. Grubb, we came to the conclusion that AeroScout’s MobileView platform does not meet the NICU’s needs in the way they had hoped. Dr. Walsh found the user interface hard to navigate even after training. The interface also has very limited customization capabilities; for example, the name designated to an individual tracker cannot be edited without going to the IT office and changing it on the back end of the software. When babies are admitted and discharged every day, along with the fact that information about that patient may change by the minute, the ability to edit quickly and easily is essential. Also, there is very little opportunity to tie information to a tracker within the MobileView software; the tracker is denoted by a name and icon when a helpful tracker would be able to have multiple icons, medical information, and more. That being said, the Wifi tracking technology is ideal for a tracking system on the scale of the NICU. We were able to obtain almost entirely room-by-room resolution even without ultrasound exciters, a technology that is within the NICU’s means in a full implementation but was outside of our means for our one-week trial.
With that in mind, we have had to change the focus of our project slightly. We initially intended to present the Vanderbilt NICU with a document outlining how to best implement the MobileView technology; however, we have decided that the technology would be more of a hindrance than a help. Dr. Walsh and Dr. Grubb were in complete agreement that they would rather wait for an ideal system than implement one that would be too difficult to use with such little reward potential. Therefore, we are focusing now on the other two deliverables for our project: we will (1) create a comprehensive Systems Requirement Document (SRD), outlining the features of a system ideal for the Vanderbilt NICU, and we will (2) create a model display system that demonstrates what we envision the system looking like and how it will be used.
Completing a comprehensive SRD seemed like a daunting task so we began with simply the structure; we have been spending time finding SRD templates and SRD’s from actual products and have begun narrowing down the headings and topics that pertain to our system. For example, in products that are often moved, “Portability” is a category describing what infrastructure must be in place to ensure ease of movement maintain functionality of the product; our system, however, will be specific to the NICU and remain in the NICU. We have also begun populating headings we deemed important with information about our system. We are hoping to have a first draft done by next week.
Our second deliverable, the model user interface, has proven to be a difficult task. Obviously, our goal would be to sync the interface with the tracking data and also with Electronic Medical Records (EMR); however, we cannot make any arrangements with AeroScout because our project will be in direct competition with their MobileView interface. Also, we do not have the legal right to access any medical records and attaining this right is an arduous process outside the scope of our Senior Design project. That being said, we have begun laying out the groundwork for how our display system will look and how it will be used by staff in the NICU. We are starting with rough sketches in PowerPoint just to get a feel for the intricacies we need to include to make the system ideal for the NICU. While this limits what we can do with the backend of the system, we will include those points (where data is stored, how it is edited, privacy concerns, etc.) in the SRD.
Both of these deliverables will be continuously edited and perfected leading up to Design Day on April 20th.