Mind Mapping

Piotr Czarnecka

Challenge

At the Institute of Cardiology at my University Hospital we are challenge to provide the best care for  patients that undergone Percutaneous Coronary Interventions (e.g., stent implementation). To  accomplish our task we need to have a deep understanding of patients’ lifestyle choices, biochemistry  processes, genetic profiles, and other determinants of disease-free survival. Much is already known on  the factors influencing survival however to establish better treatment schemes further hypotheses  must be generated and tested in clinical research. The process of generating hypotheses on relation  between survival and other seemingly uncorrelated actors from different research fields (e.g.,  behavioural studies, work activity)  is particularly challenging.

Selection

A Mind Mapping technique was chosen as a tool to organise the knowledge across various science  disciplines and to show existing relationships between different aspects of patients’ wellbeing and  health. A Mind Mapping tool was chosen because it is one of the most effective way of organising  knowledge that inspires creativity. It is constructed as a diagram of relationships leading from one main  concept to another – potentially providing indirect connections between seemingly unrelated ideas.  The concepts in our applications are the health aspects with the potential of being analysed as factors  indirectly influencing survival. The Mind Mapping technique was discussed in Week 3 of the class. it is  important to recognize, that the “mind” is associated with the patient who can be interpreted as a  customer in traditional design thinking approach.

Application

A highly interdisciplinary team of scientists, researchers and clinicians was put together to provide  insights from different disciplines. During on-site meeting, those experts discussed different aspects of  patient health and wellbeing in the context of treatment after Percutaneous Coronary Interventions.  The Mind Maps were created by the meeting moderator. Big white board with markers was used as  well as pieces of paper and magnets with construct mind maps during the meeting.

Insight

This process continued over several meetings produced number of mind maps of different ideas  connected by few other concepts. We have discovered few factors that could have hypothetical  influence on survival that have not been studied before. Those insights are planned to be tested during  clinical research.

We have learned that quality of sleep can affect blood coagulation and levels of inflammation. Also  both coagulation and inflammation can affect patients’ outcome after Percutaneous Coronary  Interventions. However direct influence of quality of sleep on survival of patients after the intervention  and the potential mechanism of such an influence have not yet been studies and have a potential for  development of further treatment and guidelines.

Approach

The use of Ming Mapping to our challenge was very successful, however using a white board with  markers was difficult due to huge number of concepts and great level of details. Documentation of  created Mind Maps was done using photos which made difficult to work with them in the future.

Next time we will implement software to create Mind Maps which will eliminate need for other  documentation methods. Good solution could be to use online applications like www.mindmup.com  to enhance collaboration.

