Portugal has one of the highest aging populations in the world, placing increasing pressure on elderly care services, especially in nursing homes. Healthcare professionals in these facilities are often overwhelmed due to the increasing number of elderly residents, shortage of human resources, and insufficient investment in infrastructure. Many still rely on paper-based documentation for clinical management, requiring healthcare professionals to frequently return to nursing stations to consult or update information. In these settings, where professionals are constantly on the move, m-Health solutions can provide real-time access to patient data, supporting faster and more accurate decisions, reducing the occurrence of errors, and improving communication among care teams. Mobile Application
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MOBILE APPLICATION TO IMPROVE WORKFLOWS IN NURSING HOMES
Publication type: Article Summary
Original title: A proof of concept of a mobile health application to support professionals in a portuguese nursing home
Article publication date: September 2019
Source: Repositório da Universidade do Minho
Authors: Márcia Esteves, Marisa Esteves, António Abelha & José Manuel Machado
What is the goal, target audience, and areas of digital health it addresses?
The study aims to develop a mobile application to support healthcare professionals in Portuguese nursing homes, improving clinical information management, task scheduling, and decision-making processes. The target audience includes healthcare professionals, particularly nurses and doctors, as well as administrators and managers who require data-driven insights to optimize the quality of care provided. This study addresses digital health domains such as mobile health (m-Health), business intelligence and clinical decision support systems.
What is the context?
Portugal has one of the highest aging populations in the world, placing increasing pressure on elderly care services, especially in nursing homes. Healthcare professionals in these facilities are often overwhelmed due to the increasing number of elderly residents, shortage of human resources, and insufficient investment in infrastructure. Many still rely on paper-based documentation for clinical management, requiring healthcare professionals to frequently return to nursing stations to consult or update information. In these settings, where professionals are constantly on the move, m-Health solutions can provide real-time access to patient data, supporting faster and more accurate decisions, reducing the occurrence of errors, and improving communication among care teams.
The application of business intelligence in healthcare involves methodologies, technologies, and analytical tools that collect, process, and analyze large volumes of clinical data to support evidence-based decision-making. The architecture of this system integrates three key components: the Extract, Transform, and Load (ETL) process, which extracts data from multiple sources, cleans and normalizes it, and loads it into a data warehouse; the data warehousing process, which structures and stores data for efficient querying and analysis; and data visualization and analytics, which leverage dashboards, reports, and data mining techniques to generate actionable insights.
What are the current approaches?
Most m-Health applications are patient-centered, such as iCare, which employs smartphones and wireless sensors for remote elderly monitoring; TEAMS, a telerehabilitation tool for multiple sclerosis patients; iMHere, which supports individuals with chronic conditions manage self-care and communicate remotely with clinicians; and the SmartWalk project, which promotes healthy aging by monitoring elderly users’ physical activity and adjusting exercise recommendations based on collected data. However, there are few solutions developed to improve healthcare professionals’ workflows and care facility management. Some exceptions include @HealthCloud, a mobile healthcare information management system that enables secure retrieval, upload, and modification of medical records and images, and CliniCam, which allows clinicians to capture, annotate, and store clinical images directly in electronic health records. Despite these advancements, the implementation of mobile solutions in nursing homes remains largely unexplored.
What does innovation consist of? How was the impact of this study assessed?
The innovation of this project consisted of the development of a mobile application for a nursing home, offering different functionalities for nurses and doctors after logging in. Nurses can view, schedule, confirm or cancel daily tasks; manage residents’ information (e.g. add new residents and update their personal data, such as informal caregiver details); view medical notes; and write nursing notes. In addition, they also manage wound treatment by tracking healing progress with photos and observations. Doctors can consult residents’ personal data, nursing notes, wound treatments and write medical notes. Both professionals can record and review periodic evaluations such as weight, blood pressure, and glucose levels, as well as manage medical and inpatient reports, including admissions and discharges. The app also includes a profile section for users to update their personal information and a logout option to ensure data security.
A arquitetura da aplicação é composta por uma base de dados relacional MySQL para o armazenamento seguro da informação, enquanto o backend, desenvolvido com uma API REST baseada em PHP, garante a comunicação entre a aplicação e a base de dados. O frontend, desenvolvido em React Native, possibilita a utilização da aplicação tanto em dispositivos Android como iOS, garantindo escalabilidade e adaptação a diferentes contextos.
The application architecture consists of a MySQL relational database for secure data storage, while the backend, developed with a PHP-based REST API, ensures communication between the mobile application and the database. The frontend, developed in React Native, enables the application to run on both Android and iOS devices, ensuring scalability and adaptability to different contexts.
A key innovation is the integration of business intelligence dashboards in Power BI, providing real-time analysis of clinical and performance indicators, facilitating data-driven decision-making. The system features charts of nursing interventions per nurse, reflecting the distribution of workload, and a comparison between realized and unrealized interventions, allowing for the identification of workflow inefficiencies. It also includes charts of capillary blood glucose variations per resident over time, enabling proactive diabetes management. Other charts display wound distribution per resident and wound type, helping to identify high-risk patients and guide preventive strategies. Additionally, charts of annual nursing interventions per type are presented, highlighting the most frequently performed procedures and enabling the optimization of resource allocation.
This technology was tested in a nursing home setting managed by a Portuguese hospital, and its impact was assessed through a SWOT analysis, identifying strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, based on insights from nurses and doctors gathered through semi-structured interviews, focus groups, and a TAM3 (Technology Acceptance Model 3) questionnaire that evaluates their perception of ease of use, usefulness, and willingness to adopt the system.
What are the main results? What is the impact of these results? What is the future of this technology?
The system reduces time waste by providing real-time access to data, eliminating the need to return to the nursing station to consult or update information. This approach improves workflow efficiency, allowing healthcare professionals to focus on direct resident care while minimizing errors associated with paper documentation, such as loss or omission of information. The transition to digital task management makes scheduling more organized and significantly reduces paper usage. Additionally, the centralized sharing of digital data enhances communication and coordination among healthcare teams, promoting more agile and informed decision-making. The development of the application had the contribution of healthcare professionals, ensuring an intuitive and user-friendly interface. As a result, the solution was well received by users, who consider it easy to navigate, useful and have shown a predisposition for its adoption.
The application has the potential to be implemented in other nursing homes, however, it is necessary that these facilities ensure an adequate technological infrastructure, including a secure wireless internet connection, accessible mobile devices and provide appropriate training to their healthcare professionals.
In the future, the database will be updated with various data from residents and healthcare professionals to generate meaningful insights. In parallel, the development of a web application is planned, replicating the functionalities of the mobile version and enabling resident management from a computer. Expanding functionalities will remain a priority, along with continuously strengthening data security through improvements in encryption and privacy protection, aligning with evolving security and regulatory standards.
Would you like to know all the details?
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Home / Publications / Publication
MOBILE APPLICATION TO IMPROVE WORKFLOWS IN NURSING HOMES
Publication type: Article Summary
Original title: A proof of concept of a mobile health application to support professionals in a portuguese nursing home
Article publication date: September 2019
Source: Repositório da Universidade do Minho
Authors: Márcia Esteves, Marisa Esteves, António Abelha & José Manuel Machado
What is the goal, target audience, and areas of digital health it addresses?
The study aims to develop a mobile application to support healthcare professionals in Portuguese nursing homes, improving clinical information management, task scheduling, and decision-making processes. The target audience includes healthcare professionals, particularly nurses and doctors, as well as administrators and managers who require data-driven insights to optimize the quality of care provided. This study addresses digital health domains such as mobile health (m-Health), business intelligence and clinical decision support systems.
What is the context?
Portugal has one of the highest aging populations in the world, placing increasing pressure on elderly care services, especially in nursing homes. Healthcare professionals in these facilities are often overwhelmed due to the increasing number of elderly residents, shortage of human resources, and insufficient investment in infrastructure. Many still rely on paper-based documentation for clinical management, requiring healthcare professionals to frequently return to nursing stations to consult or update information. In these settings, where professionals are constantly on the move, m-Health solutions can provide real-time access to patient data, supporting faster and more accurate decisions, reducing the occurrence of errors, and improving communication among care teams.
The application of business intelligence in healthcare involves methodologies, technologies, and analytical tools that collect, process, and analyze large volumes of clinical data to support evidence-based decision-making. The architecture of this system integrates three key components: the Extract, Transform, and Load (ETL) process, which extracts data from multiple sources, cleans and normalizes it, and loads it into a data warehouse; the data warehousing process, which structures and stores data for efficient querying and analysis; and data visualization and analytics, which leverage dashboards, reports, and data mining techniques to generate actionable insights.
What are the current approaches?
Most m-Health applications are patient-centered, such as iCare, which employs smartphones and wireless sensors for remote elderly monitoring; TEAMS, a telerehabilitation tool for multiple sclerosis patients; iMHere, which supports individuals with chronic conditions manage self-care and communicate remotely with clinicians; and the SmartWalk project, which promotes healthy aging by monitoring elderly users’ physical activity and adjusting exercise recommendations based on collected data. However, there are few solutions developed to improve healthcare professionals’ workflows and care facility management. Some exceptions include @HealthCloud, a mobile healthcare information management system that enables secure retrieval, upload, and modification of medical records and images, and CliniCam, which allows clinicians to capture, annotate, and store clinical images directly in electronic health records. Despite these advancements, the implementation of mobile solutions in nursing homes remains largely unexplored.
What does innovation consist of? How was the impact of this study assessed?
The innovation of this project consisted of the development of a mobile application for a nursing home, offering different functionalities for nurses and doctors after logging in. Nurses can view, schedule, confirm or cancel daily tasks; manage residents’ information (e.g. add new residents and update their personal data, such as informal caregiver details); view medical notes; and write nursing notes. In addition, they also manage wound treatment by tracking healing progress with photos and observations. Doctors can consult residents’ personal data, nursing notes, wound treatments and write medical notes. Both professionals can record and review periodic evaluations such as weight, blood pressure, and glucose levels, as well as manage medical and inpatient reports, including admissions and discharges. The app also includes a profile section for users to update their personal information and a logout option to ensure data security.
A arquitetura da aplicação é composta por uma base de dados relacional MySQL para o armazenamento seguro da informação, enquanto o backend, desenvolvido com uma API REST baseada em PHP, garante a comunicação entre a aplicação e a base de dados. O frontend, desenvolvido em React Native, possibilita a utilização da aplicação tanto em dispositivos Android como iOS, garantindo escalabilidade e adaptação a diferentes contextos.
The application architecture consists of a MySQL relational database for secure data storage, while the backend, developed with a PHP-based REST API, ensures communication between the mobile application and the database. The frontend, developed in React Native, enables the application to run on both Android and iOS devices, ensuring scalability and adaptability to different contexts.
A key innovation is the integration of business intelligence dashboards in Power BI, providing real-time analysis of clinical and performance indicators, facilitating data-driven decision-making. The system features charts of nursing interventions per nurse, reflecting the distribution of workload, and a comparison between realized and unrealized interventions, allowing for the identification of workflow inefficiencies. It also includes charts of capillary blood glucose variations per resident over time, enabling proactive diabetes management. Other charts display wound distribution per resident and wound type, helping to identify high-risk patients and guide preventive strategies. Additionally, charts of annual nursing interventions per type are presented, highlighting the most frequently performed procedures and enabling the optimization of resource allocation.
This technology was tested in a nursing home setting managed by a Portuguese hospital, and its impact was assessed through a SWOT analysis, identifying strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, based on insights from nurses and doctors gathered through semi-structured interviews, focus groups, and a TAM3 (Technology Acceptance Model 3) questionnaire that evaluates their perception of ease of use, usefulness, and willingness to adopt the system.
What are the main results? What is the impact of these results? What is the future of this technology?
The system reduces time waste by providing real-time access to data, eliminating the need to return to the nursing station to consult or update information. This approach improves workflow efficiency, allowing healthcare professionals to focus on direct resident care while minimizing errors associated with paper documentation, such as loss or omission of information. The transition to digital task management makes scheduling more organized and significantly reduces paper usage. Additionally, the centralized sharing of digital data enhances communication and coordination among healthcare teams, promoting more agile and informed decision-making. The development of the application had the contribution of healthcare professionals, ensuring an intuitive and user-friendly interface. As a result, the solution was well received by users, who consider it easy to navigate, useful and have shown a predisposition for its adoption.
The application has the potential to be implemented in other nursing homes, however, it is necessary that these facilities ensure an adequate technological infrastructure, including a secure wireless internet connection, accessible mobile devices and provide appropriate training to their healthcare professionals.
In the future, the database will be updated with various data from residents and healthcare professionals to generate meaningful insights. In parallel, the development of a web application is planned, replicating the functionalities of the mobile version and enabling resident management from a computer. Expanding functionalities will remain a priority, along with continuously strengthening data security through improvements in encryption and privacy protection, aligning with evolving security and regulatory standards.
Would you like to know all the details?
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Many patients face difficulties scheduling medical appointments in hospital units, and, when successful, they often endure long waiting times to be attended. This situation is aggravated by problems such as the incompatibility of schedules between…
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In recent years, digital transformation in healthcare has played a crucial role, driven by the exponential increase in medical data. This ranges from administrative information to detailed records of diagnoses, laboratory tests, medical images and…
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The aim of the BI Award for Innovation in Healthcare is to recognize innovative projects in the healthcare sector that improve the quality of life for the Portuguese people. In 2021, the specific theme was…
HealthData@PT: New SPMS Initiative for Health Data
Action HealthData@PT is launched in the context of the implementation of the European Health Data Space, and is an initiative approved by the European Commission under the EU4Health 2021-2027 programme. This initiative contributes to the…
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