Presence: Building trust in telehealth collaboration
How can telehealth transform critical care by fostering trust and teamwork between remote and bedside nurses? Together with fellow students from Umeå Institute of Design Anja Bedrick, Chenxi Li and Henning Birgersson, we collaborated with Philips Healthcare and Norrlands universitetssjukhus, to reimagine the Clinical Patient Monitor (CPM) to emphasize human-centered interaction design.
Project type:
Group Project
Year:
2024
Duration:
5 weeks
Discover
In the discovery phase, our team explored how trust plays a role in the collaboration between telehealth and bedside nurses. Drawing from literature in interaction design and HCI, such as Buchenau & Suri’s Experience Prototyping and Wright & McCarthy’s writing on empathy in design, we aimed to understand not just the technical workflows, but the human dynamics behind them. We conducted interviews and observations at Norrlands Universitetssjukhus, supplemented by remote calls with telehealth professionals. To better empathize with the everyday realities of critical care, we used bodystorming and mock-ups to step into the shoes of nurses navigating communication across screens. These methods helped surface nuanced frictions in workflows and showed that successful collaboration often hinges not only on data accuracy or speed—but on presence, mutual respect, and human connection.
Define
The research made it clear: a communication gap existed between bedside and telehealth nurses, often amplified by tools that didn’t support shared awareness or two-way collaboration. While current systems focus on efficiency and monitoring, our project reframed the design brief. We moved from simply improving workflows to fostering trust between nurses. By involving both roles in interviews and story-based synthesis, we defined our goal: to design a patient monitor interface that supports empathic communication, values both perspectives equally, and strengthens the sense of working as one team, rather than two siloed roles. Success meant not just improving outcomes—but making nurses feel heard, supported, and respected.
Develop
We began generating and testing design concepts through sketching, rapid prototyping, and collaborative mapping. Key insights emerged from story-based research: bedside nurses often felt surveilled, while telehealth nurses lacked enough context to act confidently. Our iterative process led us to three main interaction concepts: the Log, the Presence indicator, and the Tunnel. Early prototypes explored how visual cues, asynchronous messages, and context-aware chat could support more fluid, transparent communication. Testing these ideas through roleplay and feedback sessions helped us understand what built trust—and what undermined it. The process reaffirmed the importance of subtle, respectful design that reflects the complexities of care work.
Deliver
The final concept is a redesigned patient monitor interface that centers on building trust. For telehealth nurses, a dynamic card system helps prioritize patients based on urgency without overwhelming the screen. The integrated Log keeps a shared record of communication, blending real-time and asynchronous messages. The Presence feature brings a subtle sense of awareness, showing when the other nurse is engaged with the same patient. The Tunnel opens a focused communication channel only when both nurses are present—supporting timely, purposeful interaction without creating constant interruptions. Together, these elements create a more human-centered tool for collaboration—one that respects each nurse’s workflow and perspective.
To best experience the full system, watch the concept video.
Outcome
By shifting the design lens from efficiency alone to also including trust and empathy, this project reimagines how telehealth collaboration can feel. Rather than reinforcing hierarchy or surveillance, the new interface encourages nurses to work as a team. That means sharing responsibility and insight. It respects the dynamic, emotional nature of healthcare by making space for presence, transparency, and conversation. The result is not just a refined UI, but a system that fosters dignity, understanding, and shared purpose in critical care environments. For nurses, this means feeling seen. For patients, it means care that is not only precise but always human.
