I am Bjørn. Im 25 year old and an industrial design student! Im also a consultant, service designer and on good days I play piano, host music events and make visual expressions.
Currently I am writing my masters thesis in service design for St. Olavs Hospital Lung Cancer department.
This page will hopefully give you a good impression of who I am and what I do.
If there is anything more you’re wondering about, send me a mail at bjornrleira@gmail.com(or if you are near Bakklandet in Trondheim, just shout loudly and maybe ill hear you ;)
Cool Stuff
A collection of corners on the internet that I find amusing, so maybe you will to!
- ThisChairDoesNotExist - Autogenerated Chairs
- FoldnFly - Paper plane folding for everyone
- PlayPhrase - Find movies from quotes
- Spline - 3D-modelling in browser
- Neal - More and more complicated trolley problems
- EarthFM - Sounds of the earth
- Supershapes - Make crazy shapes
- Gridzzly - All types of grids, yeah!
- Fockups - Realistic Mockups
Services design to optimise patients
information journey for lung cancer.
Masters Thesis, Bjørn Ravlo-Leira.
Leader: Masters thesis Supervisor-Ashis Jalote Parmar and Co. Supervisor Dr. Håkon Olav Leira
Collaborator: Lung cancer section, Dept , Thoracic Medicine, St. Olavs Hospital, NTNU
*Ongoing project, This page will be updated continously during autumn and spring.
Description
The project involves a combination of secondary and primary research to investigate the ongoing development with end users. It involves an opportunity to learn about service design innovation and information design.
After a suspicion of lung cancer, the diagnostic process usually takes 6-8 weeks, involving multiple hospital visits, radiology exams and biopsies. The patients are on average 70 years old, with limited knowledge of the human lungs, their own body or the concept of cancer, cancer diagnostics and treatment. The amount of information the patients and their next of kin need to understand and accept is immense, all while they are in a state of shock due to the possibility of life-threatening disease.
With the lung cancer unit at the Dept Thoracic Medicine, St. Olavs hospital, we intend to introduce the concept of “pre-habilitation” for our patients, a quite new concept which includes training, nutrition, and information/mental support during the diagnostic period. It is easy enough to understand that as you are facing any challenge, mentally and/or physically, you prepare for it. We want the patients to do the same.
The goal is to improve the patients health and disease knowledge, to make them better cope with the disease and more fit for the following treatment. Doctors and cancer nurses will cooperate with the Geriatrics department, physiotherapists, nutrition specialists and others.
Current patient journey
Progress and development
The project started out by interviewing staff, patients, next-of-kin and hospital administrators. We drew up several paths, one for every actual stakeholder. The participants and interviewees covered all the steps and touchpoints they went through and could talk about their expereince of it. Through these initial talks we mapped many user journeys and discovered the essence of the problem and needs of the stakeholders.
After the initial inteviews we handed out information pamphlets in collaboration with the Norwegian Lung Cancer Union (Lungekreftforeningen avd. Trøndelag) and let patients take them home, read them and come back with feedback. Several painpoints were revealed like:
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Patients don´t want to be viewed as a patient, but rather a “person with a disease”.
- The time before and after a doctors visit is used to gather up much information that in most cases are either untrue and scary, or does not affect their spesific case.
- The more patients are informed, the more they are content witht their situation. The less patient know, the more stress they expereience.
Cut-outs of pamphlets handed out to patients
Less informed patient led to more stress among the general group. People usually bring friends or family with them to consultations, but those who don´t have anyone to bring end up especially confused and afraid.
From identified problem to implemented change
We had already talked with hosptial staff in all stages and professions, and mapped out their daily tasks, processes and routines. We then gathered many of them in three separete workshops to hatch out solutions that work both for patients, staff and admin.
First outcomes of stakeholder journey mapping
Workshop with hospital staffWe put together complete consepts that addresses the patients needs through the whole process and simultaneously acknowledges administrational issues.
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In Norway, universial hospitals get paid from the state, per consultation, but recuires the patient to be present. This creates an unneccessary situation, where the patient has to be called in to the hospital in order for the doctor to make an assesment regarding their situation, even though they have enough info from previous screens and checks.
As-Is user journeys for nurses and patient coordinators
We are currently in the testing phase of the new pathway (pakkeforløp), where we are assigning contact-persons to every patient, which they can turn to. We discovered through the research phase that almost all questions doctors recive, are simple to answer for any staff with minimum knowledge of the patients story, and takes loads of stress of their shoulders. Further we are drafting a systematic change proposal to the Norwegian goverment, to review current patient-payment procedures.
This project will be updated as continously through autumn 2024 and spring 2025.
Project link: Here