Preparing for the Next Pandemic: Designing Resilient Information-Sharing Systems in Acute Care.

Area of Science:

• Emergency Medicine
• Health Informatics
• Public Health

Background:

• Effective information dissemination is critical in emergency departments (EDs), especially during public health crises.
• Existing systems for clinical guideline sharing can be cumbersome and slow to update.
• The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the need for agile and accessible digital resources for healthcare professionals.

Purpose of the Study:

• To describe the human-centered design process for creating E*Drive, a centralized digital information hub for EDs.
• To assess the usage and impact of E*Drive during the COVID-19 and Mpox pandemics.
• To provide a replicable model for developing similar information-sharing resources in other healthcare settings.

Main Methods:

• An interdisciplinary team of clinicians and designers developed E*Drive using principles of reliability, agility, and accessibility.
• Usage was tracked by comparing page views to previous systems and correlating them with pandemic case counts.
• The design focused on simplifying complex guidelines into easily updateable, single-page workflows.

Main Results:

• E*Drive successfully simplified clinical guidelines into accessible, single-page workflows.
• The platform reached over 61 unique daily users by February 2023, demonstrating significant adoption.
• E*Drive facilitated proactive dissemination of Mpox resources, with guideline views peaking at 126 daily during a local outbreak.

Conclusions:

• Human-centered design and a clear, replicable process fostered clinician trust and adoption of E*Drive.
• The digital hub enabled a more proactive response to the Mpox outbreak.
• E*Drive's adaptable model, using off-the-shelf tools, can be implemented in various ED settings to improve information dissemination without specialized IT expertise.