Recently I had the privilege of attending User Interface Conference 17 over in Boston where I met some really interesting and talented people. I attended some outstanding sessions and workshops to help us improve and innovate our design process over here at Voalte. One session that resonated with me was Luke Wroblewski's talk on 1st person user interfaces where he spoke about the current trend in touch-based interfaces and how augmented reality and the use of sensors in everyday items will become the interfaces of tomorrow, paving the way for natural interaction interfaces over learned voice or esoteric device specific commands (swipe to delete anyone?).
Being part of such a saturated market, where the new buzz word 'HIPAA-compliant text messaging' is being slapped on everything like a 'Gluten-free'' label, means we constantly have to keep one eye on the goal and one toward the future. This talk got me thinking about some of the cool new ideas we could use to improve healthcare communications in the future.
Imagine being able to use your phone's altimeter (or interpolated location based on WiFi access points) to trace a nurse's route throughout the hospital. You could automatically set them as 'busy' when they enter the cafeteria or the break room and forward alarms to their backup.
There is also the concept of wearables, where users affix an unobtrusive device to their clothing which records information from a built-in GPS, altimeter, pedometer, gyroscope, accelerometer, temperature sensors, and more! We would be able to tell if a physician is sleeping, driving their car, or out on a hike, and look through their backup list to try and not disturb them if another physician is readily available.
New tools and paradigms like this will allow us to gather information about a user's surroundings and let the software work for you, naturally, as you would expect it to. As a software developer and user interface designer, it is a very exciting time to be in the healthcare communication market.