Ask HN: Please critique my idea

[CobraKai]

This idea is not commercial, but we need this information and I'd appreciate input from the HN'ers about how to make this better, areas where I'd have trouble, etc.

So I'd like to collect data on patient satisfaction after anesthesia for my group. Right now we have no idea how satisfied our patients are after they go home after a surgery. What I'd like to do is the following:

After surgery, a patient is given the URL to a website, where they will enter their unique ID that will reference the type of anesthesia they had, the surgery they had, their surgeon, and their anesthesiologist

The website will ask about: post-op pain scores, post-operative nausea/vomiting, overall satisfaction, areas of concern, incidence of sore throat and whether they're satisfied with regional anesthesia(if they got that)

My primary goal is to practice designing and deploying a relatively complex (complex to me!) web app. My secondary goal is that our group really should have this information available to us. I don't want to use a SurveyMonkey-type form because I want to link back to pertinent anesthesia information (without having the pt divulge their name). Plus it'll be a nice learning experience.

Of course, the problems with this will be self-selection of folks that choose not to fill it out, self-reporting of pain scores, etc, but it's good information for us to have and it's good practice for me!

So - I'd really appreciate your thoughts - Fire away!

[tgrass]

My first thought is there is little incentive for the patient to log on long after surgery (an hour is long for this situation). Perhaps consider actively engaging the patient after surgery by requesting an email pre-surgery. This cuts down a lot of user friction.

(I'm thinking now you may not be involved with the hospital. Find an online forum or manner to engage patient pre-surgery. It is much easier to identify them before when they are looking for help and info, than afterwards).

After surgery you send the email with a link with a unique id. If you are working with the hospital, you can have the patient's data associated with the id, decreasing the info required for them to enter.

Not sure from your post where you want input most. User experience? Web development?

[latch]

I think it's a good idea, and I'm not even sure you'll have as much of a problem getting some feedback as others think. My only contribution is that I hope you are aware of all the privacy concerns with this. It certainly isn't a huge deal, but I figured I'd mention it in case you hadn't considered it at all.

In the US, I believe it falls under HIPPA and the Protected Health Information (PHI).

[gspyrou]

You could try using Google Health or Microsoft HealthVault in order to collect patient data. http://www.google.com/intl/en-US/health/about/index.html http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-gb/healthvault

[geekytenny]

Seems it will be a good learning experience. If you are really using the required information for patients' benefit that is great and it shouldn't be a problem getting a high response rate.

[rabidonrails]

Have you figured out how to convince patients that giving you the information is worth their time?

Older patients won't/don't have the technical ability (however simple it may be) to fill out an online survey quickly and younger patients will want incentives for their time (and the info). I'd tell each patient that their doc needs to monitor them and that rather than constant appts they could fill out this survey every other day. That should convince people.