Description

The PICU Essentials App provides vital, real-time information and references to providers working as or training to be pediatricians, critical care pediatricians, or APPs. 

Project Summary/ Initial Need

PICU nurse practitioner Charlene Pringle saw a need for a central database for the latest information on pediatric critical care. As a teaching hospital, UF Health trains many people who need the up-to-date best practices and reference materials for caring for pediatric patients and managing a PICU.

I wanted to be able to provide them with changes on the fly because medicine changes sometime daily... so our textbooks are obsolete before they’re even printed.

Charlene Pringle

Prior to engaging Atmosphere Apps, the UF Health PICU team was using information from an ebook written by Pringle accessed via tablets, but that soon proved cumbersome. “ … none of them carried the iPads around. They were only carrying their phones. So then I realized that wasn’t going to work,” adds Pringle.

Our Role/How We Were Involved

When Pringle approached us, we had just put the finishing touches on Skywave, a content management system designed for apps such as PICU Essentials with smaller budgets and the need for a streamlined back end that allows for fast and frequent updates. The UF Health team agreed, and we got to work.

Our team worked closely with Pringle to see her vision for the PICU Essentials App come to life. With users of the app ranging from seasoned pediatric physicians to training pediatric residents, pediatric critical care fellows, APPs and bedside staff, we realized there was a need to allow for different access levels within user groups. Through the group feature, she was able to set up a part of the app’s content that is only visible to her team at UF Health. She can send push notifications, upload documents, and create special content that is only visible to her team and not the general users of the app. This is so useful that other groups at UF Health have requested access to the app just to get to the content that is specific to their organization.Through Skywave, we were able to designate those groups in a way that allows Pringle to manage permissions and communicate internally with her team and those she is training. This is a far cry from her previous information distribution model, which included a filing cabinet and paper copies of articles covering pediatric care topics that were likely already outdated. 

In addition to updating the content regularly, the PICU Essentials App also features a news section for current PICU topics.

“…having Skywave available so I can change things sometimes multiple times a day, as things evolve, has been really, really key to keeping it relevant and making sure that information is never out of date,” says Pringle.

We were also tasked with making the content within the app searchable, which was very important to the UF Health team, given the amount of information available on the app, as well as the need for the medical team to be able to access information quickly in medical emergencies. This search function also features predictive search, meaning it displays results based on what the user has typed so far, making it that much quicker to access information.

The Challenge

All of the printed information needed to be manually entered, which was made especially time consuming considering that Pringle entered all of it herself. From there, she needed help from others on her team: “I wanted to treat it like any medical publication that goes through peer review.” The challenge was getting enough peers to go through the process, given that there were approximately 100 topics to review. Even with this challenge, Pringle managed to get the review process completed and the app ready for use. 

Reflecting on the process, Pringle recognizes the commitment required to create and maintain an app like PICU Essentials: “You can’t just write some content …and have them turn it into an app for you…You have to actually generate the content and manage the content.” However, given the positive impact the app has had on the pediatric critical care community, it was a worthy endeavor.

The Result

While the PICU Essentials app was initially created to be used by local medical professionals and students, it is used globally and has an excellent (4.9 out of 5) rating in the App Store. Local users can access content specific to UF Health procedures and protocols, while non-local subscribers can access the main body of content available in the app. This is made possible by Atmosphere Apps’ Skywave CMS. 

There have also been other unexpected benefits of making the app widely available, including attracting qualified candidates to UF Health and providing access to resources that wouldn’t otherwise be available to medical professionals in underdeveloped countries. This was a consideration when the UF Health team decided to switch the app to a subscription model. And while some apps are created with profit in mind, this move was simply to make the app self-sustaining. In fact, the subscription fee is intentionally low to make the app accessible to those with limited resources. 

The success of the PICU Essentials app was a collaborative effort, but would not have been possible if not for the innovative thinking and dedication of a PICU nurse practitioner who saw a need, and then filled it. Pringle has this advice for anyone in a similar situation: “Don’t underestimate the need for what you’ve got. I had never imagined so many people would appreciate and read this content.”

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