OnCare – Making care simple

2019–2020 @ OnCare Technologies Limited

• User Research
• User Experience Design
• User Interface Design

Care management software that enables care agencies to plan, manage and enhance care delivery and staff communication.

eMAR case study

OnCare's eMAR (electronic medication administration records) feature allows care agencies to manage, schedule and track the administration of medications.

Project goals

Through working with customers, agencies using other systems and consultation with CQC requirements and the Care Inspectorate, we identified the following goals for OnCare’s medication management feature:

1. Reduce medication errors and gaps in reporting
   • Giving the wrong medication, or wrong dosage, or administering at the wrong time can all be major incidents
2. Help agencies to respond to medication changes and errors faster
   • Prompt and clear communication between office staff and care workers is essential in ensuring correct medications are administered and errors are dealt with quickly
3. Reduce time taken to check and audit MAR charts
   • Paper based approaches require care workers to collect the MAR charts from client’s homes each month, and then office staff to check and file them all
4. Enable clearer visibility of client medications over time, to help spot trends
   • Paper MAR charts tend to include many different acronyms and are mistake-prone, making them messy and difficult to decipher
5. Ensure it is simple and easy to use for care workers
   • Some competitor systems are overly complicated and care workers told us that this can be a real headache when on care visits

Designed solutions

1. Reduce medication errors and gaps in reporting

• Clear intuitive interface, showing just the right level of information
• Validation to help avoid missing medications
• Time stamps to avoid double dosing medications (particularly important when care workers are covering shifts)

2. Help agencies to respond to medication changes and errors faster

• Realtime medication alerts – office staff receive an email alert
• Auto alert when a medication is marked as not taken (the care worker can then edit the text or override)

3. Reduce time taken to check and audit eMARs

• Medications are managed through the office system
• Medication data is integrated with reporting tools
• Individual reports summarise visit information, issues are flagged up for quick visual scanning

4. Enable clearer visibility of client medications over time, to help spot trends

• Visual eMAR, showing clear history of medications, to enable agencies to spot trends, helping them to provide better care
• Comprehension enhanced by hover styles that highlight the selected row and column, and highlighting dates where medications have been marked as not taken