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Prescription Opioid Safety Toolkit

An interactive online safety toolkit empowering the users to have safer and effective use of prescription opioids

Background

Australia faces high rates of prescription opioid use and related harm. Despite a $10 million government investment in naloxone, less than 2% of those at risk received it. Previous studies show that while many are concerned about their opioid use, fewer than 5% have spoken to a healthcare professional. This project involves the co-design of a digital opioid safety toolkit, distributed nationally through pharmacies. The toolkit aims to encourage consumers to engage in opioid safety behaviors including 1) naloxone uptake, 2) creating a safety plan, and 3) discussing their opioid prescription with their healthcare provider.

Project year :

Project Partners : 

Team members :

2024 - 2025

A collaboration between Monash University, the Burnet Institute, the Pharmaceutical Society of Australia and Painaustralia

Dr Alex Waddell, Dr Jessica Watterson, Dhruv Basur, Chris Prawira, Joshua Paolo Seguin

Project funders :

Department of Health and Aged Care

User research, prototyping, usability testing, branding, developing public health campaign (national roll-out) assets

My role :

Phase 1: Co-design of Consumer Opioid Safety Toolkit

We worked with consumers and medicine experts to co-design a digital opioid safety toolkit consisting of:

  • A validated risk self-assessment tool (ROOM TOOL),

  • Information on risks associated with prescribed opioids,

  • Promotion of opioid safety behaviors such as naloxone uptake and creating a safety plan,

  • Encouragement to discuss opioid prescriptions with healthcare providers

Phase 2: National opioid safety toolkit dissemination

We partnered with PainAustralia and the national pharmacist peak body, the Pharmaceutical Society of Australia (PSA), to implement a national dissemination plan to support access for all Australians to an Opioid Safety Toolkit.

Phase 1: Co-designing opioid safety toolkit

Conducting research

Aim: 

  • Understand the current journey of consumers being prescribed opioids for pain
     

  • Explore potential co-design potential toolkit ideas

Synthesising  Information

Aim: 

  • Explore the results elicited in the co-design workshops
     

  • Develop information architecture to start with prototyping and onboarding developers

Ideating prototypes

Aim: 

  • Ideating and refining prototypes and start with development of the toolkit

Testing the toolkit

Aim: 

  • Testing developed toolkit with users to refine information, content language, fix UI, bugs etc

Co-design workshops with users and medical experts

Nine participants were recruited for semi-structured qualitative interviews to comprehend and evaluate the public's perception of the presence of robots in various shared settings. The participants are tech enthusiasts, university students, part-time restaurant workers, and business owners.

Barriers and facilitators  identified

The affinity map was further coded into the following themes according to the transcribed coding. This was then used to form a persona for our design solution. Key themes - Awareness, Location, Social connectedness, Feelings, Technology, Ownership, Definition 

How might we

The key findings and revelations from the semi-structured qualitative interview and thematic coding study were analyzed, and several patterns have emerged from the aforementioned manner of enquiries. These patterns allow for the identification of a variety of opportunities for developing concepts pertaining to collecting data about robots in public from users.

  • Very few participants could see a need for robots in the public space in their daily lives

  • The majority of participants questioned the significance of being able to track robots

  • Participants with technical backgrounds shown strong interest in robotics and shared similar viewpoints

  • For the most part, participants have interacted with robots in public before

Developing persona

Following persona was developed:

Proposed design direction <branding>

Based on our semi-qualitative interviews and thematic coding of the affinity map, a web based application for collecting data (user focused) and a dashboard for visualising the data collected (researcher focused) was defined.

Web based mobile application

Key focus while collecting data from user was to offer an engaging experience using interactive UI while collected as much data as possible based on clients' requirements. Try the prototype by clicking here

Web based dashboard

Key focus while developing dashboard for the researchers was to offer an intuitive dashboard with 100% control over data while ensuring  research data confidentiality.

Developing high fidelity screens

Based on identified user flow and taking inspiration from the moodpboard, high fidelity screens were developed

Final thoughts

This project allowed us to better understand how to motivate a user to share as much data as possible by implementing different principles of UI while also focusing on UX principles such as Jacob's law. Furthermore, how to better visualise data using a dashboard was also better understood through this project.

Awarded with  "INTERACTION DESIGN HIGH ACHIEVEMENT AWARD"  for this project.

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We conducted a total of two workshops via Zoom with 12-16 consumers and medical professionals. The objective of this phase was to understand the current journey of a consumer being prescribed opioids for pain, including their interactions with clinicians, pharmacists, and loved ones.

 

Participants reviewed existing toolkits to identify strengths and areas for improvement. We gathered their feedback on the medical information, style of language, visual imagery, and interaction experience with the toolkits.

Learnings from professionals

The study will help our team determine a method for collecting data regarding public robots, which will then be visualised and categorised in a clear and dynamic way for the researchers at ET Research Lab.

  • Understanding the definition of robot according to researchers
     

  • Understanding how researchers collect, understand and analyse data
     

  • Understanding the researchers’ system requirements

Learnings from consumers

The study will help our team determine a method for collecting data regarding public robots, which will then be visualised and categorised in a clear and dynamic way for the researchers at ET Research Lab.

  • Understanding the definition of robot according to researchers
     

  • Understanding how researchers collect, understand and analyse data
     

  • Understanding the researchers’ system requirements

Conducting  research

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