UChicago Medicine ADAMS Center

Co-creating a service blueprint to align teams undergoing a digital transformation

2024

Service Design

The
Brief

UChicago Medicine was undergoing a digital transformation and was working with MDClone to establish a new ADAMS Center at the hospital. The new tool allows users to quickly pull longitudinal data from across the health system, and create synthetic data for use in grant applications or quality improvement projects.

Integrating the MDClone software into the UCM system was a complex process, that had to balance the demands of various teams in IT, informatics, data management, and compliance, as well as the limitations of the software, and the volume of data itself.

The service blueprint served as a boundary object, focusing the project on the experience of using the tool, and highlighting potential friction points or areas of oversight. Collaborative co-creation of the service blueprint served to balance the needs of different teams and ensure a balance between data access and HIPAA compliance.

Co-Creating a Service Blueprint

The service blueprint was created collaboratively with stakeholders from the various teams involved in the project, including, but not limited to:

Kimisha Cassidy - Senior Project Manager, HDSI

Pete Calderone - MDClone

Julie Johnson - Executive Director, Center for Research Informatics

Mary Kate Selling - Executive Director, Clinical Data and Analytics

Shwetha Devanagondi - Director, Clinical Data and Analytics

Karen Habercross - Chief Privacy Officer

Thomas Spiegel - Vice President and Health System Chief Quality Officer

Each iteration resulted in changes to the blueprint, but also highlighted areas of concern or elements that needed to be addressed. These concerns were then highlighted and addressed during the governance team meetings. The co-creation process also helped define requirements for other teams, including requirements for training modules, and access requests.

The Core Blueprint

The core blueprint shows all the user types, permissions paths, and actions that can be taken within a single document. In this way, it highlights the process for different types of users to access different kinds of data, as well as the back-end tasks that need to be undertaken to grant access or to approve data requests.

The blueprint was designed to continue to grow and evolve as new modules and features and user types are added and the process evolves.

Individual Service Blueprints

The overall service blueprint could also be broken down into individual elements for different kinds of users:

Admin Users
ADAMS Center Staff

Pro Users
Frequent Users who have undergone training and have been given permission to directly download or export data

Clinical Users
UChicago Medicine Clinical Staff who have prior permission to view patient data on other platforms (EPIC, Slicer Dicer etc.)

Non-Clinical Users
UChicago Medicine Non-Clinical Staff, who don’t have permission to view patient data but may need access to data for certain projects (Project Managers, Quality Improvement, Designers)

University Users
Collaborators from the University (but outside the Medical Center) frequently collaborate with the medical center on projects and may need access to data.

External Vendors
Vendors from outside the hospital / university system who need access to data for projects

These focused blueprints are intended to communicate the process to those individual users, as well as how long they can expect back-end processes, such as service requests, to take. In this way, the blueprint acts as a communication tool.