The Problem

Serious illness is difficult, especially when it comes to difficult medical decisions. Patients are not always able to participate in decision-making, and families are often even more unprepared to step in.

The Project

Careverse is a website developed by the Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health at the National University of Singapore.

It aims to support family caregivers in serious illness decision-making, and better prepare them for discussions with clinicians.

My Role

I worked on Careverse from 2023-2025, as a professional UX Designer and Research Associate at the Telehealth Core.

Supporting Patient Personhood

We designed and developed the Patient Profile Maker, an interactive tool to support an initial conversation between the patient and family.

It consists of just 6 questions addressed to the patient. Multilingual and read-aloud support is included, with translations in Chinese, Malay, and Tamil. Together with English, these comprise the 4 official languages of Singapore.

The tool produces printable, personalised exports of a ‘Patient Profile’, which highlight the patient’s individuality and personhood. These can also be useful in long-term institutional care scenarios, such as nursing homes.

Supporting Caregiver Wellbeing

Many interventions focus on the patient, forgetting the larger network of informal family caregivers.

The Caregiver Meaning Tool provides a visual journey that prompts reflection, celebrates caregivers, and points them to resources based on their expressed needs.

It is based in part on the Singapore Caregiver Quality of Life Scale (SCQOLS).

Feedback

Caregivers in a focus group discussion reacted positively to the website. Speaking about the Patient Profile Maker, a caregiver said:

“It brings greater clarity, in terms of: what are the things I have to consider, like if there’s bad news. I never thought of it. It’s like a checklist. You don’t have to be terminally ill to use this.” 

The website is currently being tested in a randomized controlled trial.

Publications

I have coauthored the following papers at the intersection of Health and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI):

1. Designing for Caregiver-facing Values Elicitation Tools (CHI 2024, Best Paper Award)
   Pin Sym Foong, Natasha Ureyang, Charisse Foo, Sajeban Antonyrex, Gerald CH Koh

2. The Benefits and Risks of LLMs for Facilitating Medical Decision-Making among Laypersons (DIS 2025)
   Charisse Foo, Pin Sym Foong, Camille Nadal, Natasha Ureyang, Thant Naylin, Gerald CH Koh