While waiting to get his hair cut, Michael Pitt, MD, had an epiphany.

“If I can get a text from Great Clips that tells me I’m third in line,” he says, “then why can’t we do something similar for patients and families at the hospital to let them know when the doctor will be by for rounds?”

Hospital rounds are an important moment in the daily routine, giving the patient, their family, and their care team an opportunity to share updates, review treatment plans, ask and answer questions, and otherwise stay on the same page. But it can be difficult for everyone involved to know when rounds will happen on a given day.

“The most common question at the hospital is, ‘When will the doctor be here?’” says Pitt, an M Health Fairview pediatric hospitalist and professor in the University of Minnesota Medical School’s Department of Pediatrics. “Patients and their families are sort of hostages at the bedside waiting for us to arrive.”

So with his barbershop text message in mind, Pitt set out to make an app that would tell patients and families their place in the rounds queue. He connected with John Sartori, PhD, an associate professor at the U’s College of Science and Engineering, and Chelsea Klevesahl, a marketing and design leader, and together, they created Q-rounds.

Developed with support from Minnesota Masonic Charities, Q-rounds is a first-of-its-kind software that allows everyone involved in a person’s care to know when rounds are happening just by looking at their phones. The technology also allows family members to RSVP to join rounds remotely, so that everyone stays in the loop, no matter where they are.

Q-rounds is currently available at M Health Fairview Masonic Children’s Hospital, where more than 12,000 patient families have joined rounds remotely. Pitt says he hopes to make the app available in more clinical locations, because thus far, the response has been overwhelmingly positive.

“Doctors are telling us they’ve never felt more connected to patients, nurses are telling us they feel more involved in care,” Pitt says. “And most importantly, families are telling us that they no longer feel the need to choose between being at the hospital or quitting their jobs to be present for the most important discussion of the day.”