An Oklahoma Christian University student is helping improve the quality of care in free clinics and mission fields after he developed the application Clinic Vitals.
The app, which is free to both iOS and Android users in the app store, is designed to teach volunteers at medical clinics to correctly take patients’ vital signs.
Senior Landon Hester said he came up with the idea for the app several years ago, began production on it last spring and completed the project last fall. He said he recognized a need for the app following his own experiences volunteering in free clinics and on medical missions.
“At for-profit clinics, nurses will be the ones taking vital signs and they have years of training on how to do it, but at a lot of free clinics, there aren’t enough nursing volunteers to do this, so they have biology majors doing it,” Hester said. “Biology majors don’t have any formal academic education on how to take vital signs and clinics don’t have a lot of resources to train them. What we’re doing is training them before they ever go to the clinics, so once they’re there, they provide a high quality of care.”
Hester said the app is a great option for improving service because it does not cost the clinics any money and it is not difficult to implement. He said he and the other students who are producing the app are actively networking with different individuals who may have interest in using the app in their practices.
“We’ve presented it to groups of doctors who gave really positive feedback and suggested that even we should try to get medical students using the app,” Hester said. “We are starting to network our way into clinics. I’m meeting with a doctor soon, who’s on the board of a major missions organization, who says he likes the app. We’re going to talk about how they can use it.”
Because the app would be beneficial to clinics, Hester said he hopes to increase awareness about it. He said he wants to fill the need he recognized in the medical field.
“If anyone has connections to free clinic or missions organizations, I would love for them to email me so we can get them using the app and can get better medical care for all of the people that they serve,” Hester said.
Junior Christian Reyes said he did all the graphic designs for the app. Although he worked in the Oklahoma Christian marketing office, Reyes said this was his first time specifically designing for an app. He said there was a lot of attention to detail and re-tweaking involved in the app’s final graphic designs.
“It was a different approach to design for me,” Reyes said. “Landon was really good about communicating back and forth with me about what he needed, when he needed it.”
Reyes said he thinks the app’s purpose is good and hopes it will create a better clinic experience for people. He said he is continuing to redesign and simplify the app as he and Hester tweak the product they want on the market.
“I am not one of the people that will just kind of jump on board to a project if I don’t think that there’s some sort of point to it,” Reyes said. “I don’t want my own designs to be out there, just to be out there. I want them to have a purpose.”
Dean of the College of Natural and Health Sciences Jeff McCormack said Hester worked on the app as part of an independent study with him during the school year. McCormack also said he helped the students brainstorm effective ways to market the product to free clinics and missions organizations.
“Landon and a group of students have been involved with serving in charitable clinics for a number of years,” McCormack said. “Charitable clinics means those that are providing free health care to under-served populations in Oklahoma City. One of the questions they always ask is how do we appropriately educate ourselves on how to do that first line of checking vitals, so they started knocking this [app] idea around and it seemed like a pretty good idea, so I said I’d certainly support them.”
McCormack said the students have already promoted the app at one medical missions conference in Texas and have plans to further share it at conferences in the future.
“We know [the app is] being downloaded, we know it’s been used by some clinics, we know it’s been distributed to several charitable organizations, but the real question is: Is it being used and is it educating people appropriately?” McCormack said. “We don’t know that yet—it’s still pretty new. My hope is that it helps to advance education that’s needed for volunteers that serve at charitable clinics.”
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