Clinic Walking Tour

The system you are about to "tour" shows a collaborative application built with WorkThru technology. The system was designed to capture (and expedite) the practices of a univesity medical center's Department of Rheumatology. Whenever a patient is seen--every few months--a number of evaluations are made and scales filled out. Some of this work is done by the patient, some by the clinic administrator, and some by the physician. Forms move among the three with notes attached, errors listed, and views and activities controlled according to the role of the current user.

1. Several days before his or her next clinic visit, the patient receives an email.

2. The link leads to a log-in page, where the patient enters a confidential user name and password. He is taken to his personal Clinic home page.

3. The "visit report" consists of many forms, but the patient sees only the one that he needs to work on.

He rates his discomfort, flexibility, and ability to perform various activities. These ratings form the basis for a number of "scores" that the system calculates automatically and reports to the doctor.

4. There is a space at the bottom for a cover note to the Clinic. Pressing "Submit" returns the form to the clinic.

5. George Kaplan's followup report now appears in the work queue of the clinic administrator. This is a sortable list of all the tasks waiting for her attention.

6. When she opens George Kaplan's followup report, she can see the full set of forms.

She can review the patient self-evaluation form, but cannot move any of the sliders or change any of the scores.

7. However, she can add notes. . .

8. and send the form back to the patient for additional work.

9. The patient receives another email asking him to log in, and finds that the form has been annotated and returned.

A blue pyramid signals that there is a note attached to that section of the form. Clicking on the pyramid opens the note...

10. . . . and gives the patient an opportunity to respond, make corrections, and send the work back.

12. When the patient comes in for his appointment, she fills in some information.

As she works, the system catches invalid data and brings it to her attention. A red pyramid marks the section where the error has occured.

15. The report arrives on the doctor's desktop . . .

16. . . .with notes and error alerts summarized for the doctor's information.

17. The doctor has access to the complete set of forms in the report.

18. Here too the system catches out-of-range values. This is a "soft" error, signalling a value that is unusual but not impossible. It must be explicitly accepted by the doctor.

19. All errors must be cleared up before the report can be committed to the database.

20. A summary page displays results of all tests. Measuremements from the previous visit are displayed for comparison purposes. Data from this report will show up as "previous exam" values the next time the form comes up.

ADMINISTRATION

The clinic circulates other reports, each composed of different forms and moving around in differfent ways.

For example, Lupus Clinic reports take another trip, back to the Admin, who fills in the results of certain lab tests and then returns it to the doctor.

Other views available to the clinic include:

a sortable list of patients, with links to: