Project Name: STI Contact Tracing (Chlamydia)
Client: Närhälsan Kunskapscentrum för Sexuell Hälsa
Project Members: Sophia Pagil, Khushboo Jagiasi, Emelie Shehadeh & Anna Saraste
Project Brief: Our client presented to us a case whereby they have massive struggles when it comes to Sexually Transmitted Infection (STI) Contact Tracing. STI Contact tracing happens when a patient has been positively diagnosed with an STI, such as chlamydia, and the healthcare personnel ask this patient about their partners whom also might be at risk of being infected. The ‘original’ infected patient is called the index patient. The index patient, must according to Swedish law name all their previous partners from the last 12 months so that they can get tested and treated as well.
The problem our client faced was that the data that emerges during the current STI contact tracing process is manually written on paper, handled and stored in folders in a journal cabinet of the unit responsible for the infection trace. This routine requires staff to be physically at the same unit in order to perform the task.
In addition, different clinics cannot view other clinics records as the data is sensitive and stored manually. Our clients initial brief was that our team should investigate the possibilities to digitise their presented issue and to find a solution that could remove the pain points of manually handling these papers to reduce the amount of infections within Sweden. In addition, our client wanted guidance and help to understand how their current manual systems might be in violation with the new GDPR laws & regulations.
Process & Insights: Our team had 6 weeks to work on our clients given brief. We approached the project from a service design perspective, whereby we immersed, observed and interviewed all relevant stakeholders to get a wide perspective on the situation.
Our research process & visualisations of the contact tracing process revealed that there were several problems across different levels. We identified issues on the patient, clinic, regional and state levels. For each problem on each level, we saw that there were different kinds of short and long term strategic solutions.
Project Outcomes: One of our final deliverables during this 6 week course was a redesigned partner letter. After our insights we saw that our clients' wish for a digital solution was still valid and should be pursued, but our contribution in this short time could be to redesign the infographics of the letters. We believe that the letters are a key to breaking the complexity of STI contact tracing as patients can be nudged to sent to the right clinics and thus avoiding miscommunication between the clinics.
Redesigned Prototype of Partner Letter 1
