Image-e-cation: An Image-Centric Solution to Cross-Cultural Healthcare Communication

Effective communication plays a vital role in healthcare especially between the nurses and patients who are the primary stakeholders in the healthcare sector. However, language barriers can create communication difficulties leading to miscommunicat - ion and misunderstandings. To address this issue, we have developed a mobile application to facilitate communication through images as a part of a first-year course named “Design thinking for Social Innovation ''. It features a wide range of images and diagrams that can be used to illustrate various medical conditions. The app heavily relies on visual diagrams like body diagrams (to identify the area of discomfort), when (referring to the number of days the patient is suffering from the particular medical condition or disease), problem duration (selecting a period in a day when the patient feels the pain is more), pain scaling illustrations (depicting the level of pain on a scale of 1 to 10) and to choose if they have any allergies. The app has a simple User Interface for patients to use. The Design Thinking Methodology was used to build the project starting from gathering requirements to developing a solution. The results of the study highlight that the solution can become a product to help nurses or any healthcare professionals diagnose and treat their patients more accurately, resulting in better patient outcomes.