CareCard
2024 OGP Build For Good Hackathon
Will anyone complain about getting too much help?
Some elderly living alone receive help from as much as 5 different voluntary groups, yet these organisations lack a common platform to communicate. This duplicates services and places strain on an already understaffed social sector.
How could CareCard streamline data from different organisations to provide timely and adequate support to elderly Singaporeans living alone?
Duration: 2 months
Role: UX Researcher, App designer and Product Manager
Tools: Figma, OpenAI, Zoom, Otter.ai
Group members: You Ming, Biying, Jerome, Dixon, Shiyin
What is CareCard
CareCard is a provider-sourced data aggregator that gives care providers a holistic view of the seniors they are caring for. It only takes a few minutes to create a visit log and obtain up-to-date information from other care providers. Using AI, information is automatically converted into actionable items and visit summaries, updating users at a glance.
CareCard was the brainchild of 5 like-minded individuals, inspired by the thoughts and stories of 91 healthcare workers, volunteers, organisations and the public.
In addition to interviews and user testing, CareCard was successfully piloted in Lions Befrienders, a voluntary welfare organisation serving elderly all across Singapore.
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After surveying the public to gather their views on helping elderly living alone, we conducted 11 in-depth interviews with care providers to learn more. All of them pointed to one biggest pain point: fragmented care services.
Even social workers report not having the full picture of the care network provided for every elderly living alone. In this ever-changing tech world, the elderly are also finding it challenging to remember every volunteer that come knocking on their door. This leads to inefficient use of resources and deprives other elderly of help.
Hence, CareCard was created to bridge this gap.
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Lions Befrienders took notice of our solution and collaborated with us to implement it with their staff.
Lions Befrienders provides a range of services to elderly living alone, including housekeeping, meal delivery, medication check-ins, case management and more. Each department work in silo hence CareCard served as a common communication platform for them.
80% of users agreed that CareCard was intuitive and easy to use and saves time on documentation.
With the success of this pilot run, Lions Befrienders intends to create a common platform to allow seamless communication across all departments in the future.
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We see CareCard as potentially being a lightweight app that can be incorporated into the documentation systems of various healthcare and social services.
Not only does this allow information to be shared across organisations, it also keeps data secure under one system.
Documentation on-the-go
CareCard allows users to update anytime, anywhere.
Busy care providers appreciate the ability to update their visits while still fresh in their mind. Most of them travel to more than one place each day so being able to document while traveling is a plus point.
Date and time can be backdated, allowing flexibility in documentation.
In order to remain lightweight, CareCard focuses only on non-medical services such as befriending, food delivery and housekeeping which as the top services provided to elderly living alone.
Our user testing showed that users took less than 5 minutes to log in, find a care recipient and input their visit.
7 out of 8 users find it intuitive and easy to use.
AI summary
After users have input their visit logs, information will be summarised into one-liner action items and a summary of their visit.
This allows the next care provider to know at a glance what to assist with and prevent duplication of services, saving time.
When a user input corresponds to resolving an action item, the app uses AI to promptly remove it from the list.
Most users found the AI summary to be the most useful feature of CareCard.
Data Protection
Data protection was the main concern among most users.
To ensure that only verified users have access to the care information, organisations have to first register their staff and volunteer’s email with CareCard.
A personal data protection consent form was also signed by care recipients who participated in the pilot test.
Noting that volunteers are usually not provided with the NRIC of the elderly due to organisational regulations, we provided 3 identifier fields. Users can choose to fill 2 out of 3 identifiers to access an elderly’s information.
“To be able to see what the other care staff are doing with my senior is very useful… it’s a really untouched area”
Chun Wah, Lions Befrienders Staff
Reflections
CareCard hopes to supplement the care gaps in Singapore’s social sector and reallocate resources more efficiently to serve our rapidly aging society. Although it has been an uphill battle onboarding organisations to a new platform, we are hopeful that CareCard will become that small yet essential part of every documentation system in Singapore.