Description: ZipRounds (ZR), a Salesforce Chatter-based collaboration tool, revolutionizes in-hospital communication. ZR enables providers to send, receive & store patient-related messages in an easily searchable, indexable & retrievable way. It hybridizes the asynchronous alerting capability of pagers (and the familiar web portals used for this purpose) with Facebook-like object-centered content management & on-the-fly hashtag indexing. Because ZR messages can subsequently be searched across patients and by keyword/hashtag, they open a vast window into clinical operations that were previously hidden by an inadequate and deliberately amnestic communication infrastructure. ZR was piloted in alpha form in April 2012 at Mount Zion to rave reviews. For the IT challenge, we will build for ZR a HIPAA-compliant mobile client (ZRMC) (ZR itself is already HIPAA compliant). This will reduce the redundancy of carrying a pager and a smart phone and ultimately allow UCSF Medical Center to transition away from pagers entirely—a long term dream for every functional department at MC from security to telecom to the privacy office.

Deliverables: ZRMC, once built, will be used by employees for all electronic communication in the hospital, supplanting in most instances both email and Pagerbox (the current text-paging solution). We will build ZRMC on the architecture of ZR (secure VM MCIT server, API-based connections to Chatter and paging infrastructure, a functional interface for sending and tagging messages), refactored for use from an iPhone or Android device. Using ZRMC, providers of all disciplines (nurses, physicians, pharmacists, etc.) will be able to securely text one another without the hassle of sitting down at a computer, while receiving messages on any device of their choice—pager, smartphone, or email.

Impact on UCSF’s mission and/or community: Once ZRMC is developed and rolled out, it will dramatically improve the work flow of all UCSF providers. Nurses and physicians will be able to text back and forth for simple questions, saving call backs for points that actually require discussion. Primary teams will be able to send pictures of rashes, wounds, and even x-rays to consultants, who will be able to track and prioritize questions and analyze them in real time (X % of our consults this month are for this problem; Y % for this other problem) directly from their smartphones. The increase in efficiency will ultimately benefit the 17,000+ patients admitted each year by the Medical Center, as well as the countless outpatients managed in primary and specialty clinics. 

List of team members and roles; estimated time devoted.

Michael Blum—visionary: provide clinical leadership and oversight; member of and bridge to C-suite at UCSF MC. Time devoted: 5 hours (done independently).

Raman Khanna—team leader, visionary, user/subject matter expert: clinical input into all tasks involved in build. Time devoted: 200 hours (done both independently and on department time, see attached letter from Robert Wachter).

Lekshmi Santhosh—user/subject matter expert:input into build especially features affecting residents. Interface with residents to facilitate roll out. Time devoted: 40 hours (done independently).

Michael Turken—user/subject matter expert/design: input into build especially features affecting students. Design mockups for tech team. Time devoted: 40 hours (done independently).

Larry Suarez—technologist: ITS worker who builds mobile applications; his role will be to build the ZRMC, which will acts as a front end for access to ZR from mobile phones. Time devoted: 60 hours (done both independently and on department time; have email confirmation from supervisor Jeff Jorgenson that Larry has permission to work on this project).

Luis Campos—technologist: ITS worker who will work with Larry (potentially with help from external vendors at SalesForce.com and MuleSoft) to integrate ZRMC and ZR from the ZR production end. Time devoted: 60 hours (done both independently and on department time; have email confirmation from supervisor Ed Martin that Luis has permission to work on this project).

****NOTE****

our proposal has been merged with "Using Smart Phone app as Pagers" http://open-proposals.ucsf.edu/itcontest/proposal/167. We will be working with this team, and the team members are as follows:

John Houston – Project Manager for Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, HoustonJ@orthosurg.ucsf.edu

Erin Simon – Project Lead for Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, SimonE@orthosurg.ucsf.edu

Timothy Greer – Technical Consultant for Dean's Office, SFGH, TGreer@sfghdean.ucsf.edu