Testing the potential success of a stroke alarm communication app

The question

Our client was working on a stroke alarm communication app. The app was only a concept back then, so we only had the paper prototype to work with. The goal of the app: when a patient enters the emergency room, the app gets activated, and the right people would be warned right away, in order to enhance the door-to-treatment-time. The client wanted to know whether their app would be an added value to help a stroke patient. 

The end goal

In order to really understand the value of this potential new app, we needed to understand the current way of working in the United States when a stroke patient enters the hospital. Therefore we needed to define the user requirements of the application.

Our approach 

We did this by means of questioning two different focus groups in the United States. The first group consisted of emergency department (ED) physicians and neurologists. The second group consisted of ED nurses and stroke nurses. We showed them the concept and talked about the flow:

  • What do you think are the pros and cons?
  • Who influences the app the most?
  • Who gets the most benefit from the implementation of this app?
  • What has to be done differently?
  • What can be better?
  • What are the success factors that will successfully launch the app?
  • What are the disadvantages that can sabotage the app?
Digital healthcare

Our outcomes

  • Understanding of the perception of the key stakeholders in Emergency Department stakeholders on the stroke app concept.
  • Critical success factors of the app concept.
  • Recommendations on further improvement on the concept. 

By asking these and many other questions, we got to identify the factors that would be critical to the success of the app.

How they will help the customer

Because of the gathered insights, the client could now reevaluate the purpose of the app. Instead of pumping great budgets into development, without really knowing whether it’d be successful or not, they could now make a substantiated decision whether to continue the development or not.

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