Hark - Clinical Task Management
Services
Services
Revolutionising hospital task management
Hark replaces outdated pagers with smart, real-time clinical coordination.
Challenge
Hospitals handle thousands of clinical tasks daily, often relying on outdated technologies like pagers. This makes it difficult to manage, prioritise, and audit tasks effectively.
Junior doctors, particularly on night shifts, struggle to coordinate patient care across multiple wards using pagers alone.
Inefficient communication can lead to delayed interventions for deteriorating patients or missed admissions, impacting patient safety.
Process
Investigate — Observe and Understand Users
Spend time in context to uncover real needs.Design — Visualise and Prototype Solutions
Create concepts, journeys, and testable designs.Execute — Build and Integrate Systems
Develop backend, apps, and cloud infrastructure.Assess — Measure and Learn from Use
Evaluate impact and gather user feedback.
IDEA model
Investigate
- Observe ward rounds
- Shadow junior doctors on shifts
- Analyse pager communication patterns
- Conduct interviews with clinical staff
- Map existing workflows and pain points
IDEA model
Design
- Define key user needs
- Prototype digital task management
- Design prioritisation and escalation features
- Create visual app designs to illustrate vision
- Validate concept with clinicians
IDEA model
Execute
- Build backend and database services
- Build mobile and web app interfaces
- Deploy secure cloud infrastructure
- Deploy in pilot hospitals
- Train clinical teams on usage
IDEA model
Assess
- Conduct usability testing sessions Measure impact on response times
- Evaluate efficiency in 24 hospital areas
- Gather feedback from pilot users
- Identify areas for improvement
Solution
We created Hark, a smartphone-based digital platform that replaces pagers with an intuitive, real-time task management system.
Hark enables doctors to escalate tasks to a central list, delegate to available colleagues, and prioritise tasks based on urgency.
It facilitates secure sharing of clinical data, provides an audit trail for accountability, and integrates with hospital electronic patient records — ensuring that doctors have the right information when they need it most.
To further enhance hospital operations, Hark includes clinical and operations dashboards that provide real-time visibility into task loads, bottlenecks, and overall efficiency.
These dashboards help teams track and prioritise critical patient needs, optimise resource allocation, and improve coordination across departments, ensuring smoother workflows and better patient outcomes.
Results
Pilot studies at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust showed that Hark improved information transfer in 22 out of 24 key hospital areas, reducing response times by 37% compared to pagers. These improvements enhanced patient safety and efficiency.
Hark was later acquired by DeepMind and developed into Streams, a system designed to detect patient deterioration early. Streams launched in hospitals across the UK and internationally, bringing the benefits of smarter clinical communication to even more healthcare teams.
