Data First Project

Data/AI SmartWatch Project is a Project in conjunction with the Information Sciences department partnered with Keck Hospital. Keck Hospital was in need of research and analysis on smart wearables with a focus on data collection, data management, and ethical considerations. This research is used to develop ethical data design recommendations that shape hospital health policies for over 500 night shift nurses.

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duration

Sep 2023 - Dec 2023 (3 months)

ROLE

Data Analyst

TEAM

4 Analysts, 2 Advisors, 2 Supervisors

RESPONSIBILITIES

Data Analysis for Actionable Insights, Excel, Communication, Research

Role & Impact

The goal was to use this data and translate it to actionable insights. The findings highlight the challenges faced by night shift nurses, including reduced physical activity, poorer sleep quality, and lower life satisfaction. This research adds to the growing evidence of the negative health impacts associated with night shift work, emphasizing the need for strategies to mitigate these effects.The study demonstrates the potential of wearable sensors in monitoring well-being and identifying areas for intervention in high-stress work environments like healthcare.

Award

PROJECT GOALS

Company goals (Keck Hospital)

Project group goals

Receive a detailed, data-driven insight into how shift work, especially night shifts, impacts the physical and mental well-being of nurses, a crucial segment of their healthcare workforce.' information.

Give an holistic view of the current state of wearable devices’ health data inside and outside of hospitals. Provide more detailed analysis of the different aspects of data collection, user privacy, and data system management.

JUMP TO SOLUTION

01. Research

The Problem

There are missed opportunities for wearable devices that can provide constant monitoring of users.

Data collected by personal wearable devices are not always in an accessible or useful format to aid diagnosis for medical professionals and doctors.

With the increase of health data collection ensuring that laws, regulation, and ethics protect the privacy of individuals while still utilizing the data collected effectively is important.

Overall Motivations

①Wearable healthcare devices can collect large amounts of data that has the potential to provide valuable insights

②Advancements in AI tech can improve usage of wearables data for health

③Current technologies do not take good advantage of wearables data, sometimes due to privacy and ethical concerns

④The goal is to recommend innovative ways to build healthcare devices with AI systems, with ethical considerations in mind.

RFP Admins

RFP Volunteers

The admin's role includes screening volunteer applications and approving or rejecting candidates, planning volunteer events, and answering volunteer inquiries.

People would apply to be a volunteer; once they've been approved by the admin, they would be able to sign up for volunteer events.

User Interviews

Our research team had acces to a study with 113 nurses using wearable sensors to understand the impact of shift work on their health and well-being.

"Working night shifts often leads to poor sleep quality, making me feel constantly tired."
"Staying active is harder on night shifts; I find myself being more sedentary."
"Balancing life satisfaction is challenging with the irregular hours of night shifts."
01
Increased sedentary behavior and lower physical activity among night shift nurses
02
Night shifts lead to poorer sleep quality and circadian misalignment
03
Maintaining regular sleep and activity patterns impacts overall health and job performance
04
Night shift nurses report lower levels of life satisfaction compared to day-shift nurses

User Persona

Since direct interviews with nurses were not feasible, we created a representative profile to guide our human-centered research approach.

Name: Natalie
Age: 24
Occupation: Nurse
Location: Los Angeles

Natalie has been working as a nurse for five years, often on night shifts. Despite her commitment, she struggles with maintaining a balanced sleep schedule and often misses critical health updates due to her irregular working hours. She's expressed frustration with the lack of support for night shift challenges.

Feels overwhelmed due to the lack of a centralized system to track her health and work schedule

Forgets important health check-ups and wellness activities

Challenges in staying informed about health and wellness initiatives.

Difficulty in maintaining a regular sleep pattern due to night shifts.

How might we create a health and wellness management system for nurses, that efficiently tracks their activity, ensuring their overall well-being, while also taking into account ethical considerations and maintaining privacy and confidentiality between healthcare workers and management?

02. Ideation

Information Architecture

Before moving onto drafting solutions, we created an information architecture to better understand the relationship between the admin-side and volunteer-side platforms and key features to include in each side.

03. Final Solutions and Reccomendations

PAIN POINT
Night shift nurses report lower levels of physical activity and life satisfaction

The use of wearable sensors revealed that night shift nurses are more sedentary and report lower life satisfaction. Nurses struggled to maintain a healthy level of physical activity due to the demands of night shifts.

Our solution was to introduce a feature within the nurses' health management platform that provides personalized activity goals and recommendations. Similar to familiar fitness tracking apps, this would encourage physical activity through tailored challenges and rewards, aligning with their shift schedules.

PAIN POINT
Night shift nurses experience poorer sleep quality
Data indicated challenges for nurses in transitioning to restful sleep during off-days due to schedule inconsistency.

To address this issue, suggested developing a sleep tracking and advisory module within the platform that offers sleep hygiene education, sleep pattern tracking, and sleep optimization suggestions based on shift patterns.
PAIN POINT
Difficulty in tracking and managing personal health metrics
The existing system does not support real-time tracking or analysis of health data, making it hard for nurses and administrators to monitor wellness trends and respond accordingly.

As a solution, we presented an integrated dashboard for both nurses and administrators that visualizes real-time data from wearable sensors. This dashboard would facilitate immediate feedback, alerts for health concerns, and generate reports for long-term wellness monitoring.

0.4 Final Thoughts
Impact
The completion of the research project within the targeted three-month period showcases our team's commitment and hardwork. The reaserch has led to a policy revision that encourages better management of nurses' physical activities. Furthermore, the recommendations from the research have been instrumental in integrating a new system to monitor and support nurse well-being. This has had a profound effect on the 500 nursing staff members at Keck Hospital, to enhance their work-life balance and overall health. This has also prompted considerations to replicate these changes across other hospitals, potentially benefiting a broader nursing community!
Takeaways
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Constraints
Rooms for improvement
Next steps
Working in a cross-functional team
Practicing using collaboration platforms, making sure that I'm communicating the process throughout every step.
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Deadlines and frequent changes
‍Initially, we had envisioned two separate platforms for management; we ended up having to backtrack and prioritize the most realistic approaches within the given timeframe.
Accessibility
‍‍Future versions will focus on full compliance with accessibility standards to ensure the system is usable for all nurses, including those with disabilities.

User testing
‍Conducting comprehensive user testing with nurses to validate the intuitiveness and effectiveness of the system.
Policy
‍Work with hospital administration to draft and implement new policies based on the research findings to promote nurse well-being actively.
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