Background

Carefully designed infographics can be useful tools to support comprehension and thus help patients engage with their own health data. Infographics may contribute to patients' ability to participate in the Learning Health System through participation in the development of a robust data utility, use of clinical communication tools for health self-management, and involvement in building knowledge through patient-reported outcomes.

Inpatient medication-tracking tools, when designed to meet patients' needs, can play an important role in fostering patient participation in their own care and patient-provider communication during a hospital stay.

SummaryObjective: To investigate patients' experience using an inpatient personal health record (PHR) on a tablet computer to increase engagement in their hospital care. Methods: We performed observations and conducted semi-structured interviews with 14 post-operative cardiac surgical patients and their family members who received an inpatient PHR. Themes were identified using an inductive coding scheme. Results: All participants responded favorably to having access to view their clinical information. A majority (85.7%) of participants used the application following an initial training session. Patients reported high satisfaction with being able to view their hospital medications and access educational materials related to their medical conditions. Patients reported a desire to view daily progress reports about their hospital stay and have access to educational information about their postacute recovery. In addition, patients expressed a common desire to view their diagnoses, laboratory test results, radiology reports, and procedure notes in language that is patient-friendly. Conclusion:Patients have unmet information needs in the hospital setting. Our findings suggest that for some inpatients and their family members, providing personalized health information through a tablet computer may improve satisfaction, decrease anxiety, increase understanding of their health conditions, and improve safety and quality of care. BackgroundBeing a patient in the hospital is an anxiety-inducing experience. Poor communication and lack of access to information can have detrimental effects on a patient's psychological wellbeing and coping abilities [1][2][3][4][5]. Policymakers [6, 7] and patient advocates [8,9] are increasingly focusing on this problem. This study investigates how an inpatient personal health record (PHR) may help address the information needs of patients and improve their engagement and experience in the hospital.Provision of medical information and education about care can allay a patient's uncertainty and stress [10][11][12][13][14][15]. Further, sharing information has been shown to reduce patient requests for clinicians' time, foster a sense of control and empowerment while promoting self-efficacy and ownership of illness [16][17][18], and lead to increased participation as an informed partner in making health decisions [19][20][21][22]. Previous research suggests that patients want to use PHRs and believe that they will be valuable [23]. Moreover, patients believe that their adherence to treatment regimens will improve if they have the opportunity to read and understand their health information [24,25]. However, patients are not typically given the opportunity to review their health information in the hospital. For example, in a survey of hospitalized patients conducted by Cumbler and colleagues, 90% of respondents said they wanted to review their hospital medication list for accuracy, but only 28% said they were given the opportunity to do so [26]. Without access to a documented care plan, patients ar...

Context:Tailored visualizations of patient reported outcomes (PROs) are valuable health communication tools to support shared decision making, health self-management, and engagement with research participants, such as cohorts in the NIH Precision Medicine Initiative. The automation of visualizations presents some unique design challenges. Efficient design processes depend upon gaining a thorough understanding of the data prior to prototyping.Case Description:We present a systematic method to exploring data attributes, with a specific focus on application to self-reported health data. The method entails a) determining the meaning of the variable to be visualized, b) identifying the possible and likely values, and c) understanding how values are interpreted.Findings:We present two case studies to illustrate how this method affected our design decisions particularly with respect to outlier and non-missing zero values.Major Themes:The use of a systematic method made our process of exploring data attributes easily manageable. The limitations of the data can narrow design options but can also prompt creative solutions and innovative design opportunities.Conclusion:A systematic method of exploration of data contributes to an efficient design process, uncovers design opportunities, and alerts the designer to design challenges.

Social determinants of health, including low health literacy and limited English proficiency, and other factors place Latinos at high risk for health disparities related to chronic diseases. Such diseases require self-management skills as well as medical management. Well-designed visualizations are suitable for visualizing data related to self-management because they can help narrow the comprehension gap between individuals with low and high levels of health literacy by leveraging existing visual analysis skills while reducing the demand on literacy and numeracy competencies. Use of information visualizations also supports a common visual representation across languages to address limited English proficiency. This report illustrates the use of information visualizations for communication related to self-management through research-based case examples and summarizes key lessons from studies with Latinos in New York City.

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Despite the benefits of advance directives (AD) to both patients and care providers, they are often not completed due to lack of patient awareness. The purpose of this paper is to advocate for creation and use of an innovative information visualization (infovisual) as a health communication tool aimed at improving AD dissemination and engagement. The infovisual would promote AD awareness by engaging patients to learn about their options and inspire contemplation and conversation regarding patients’ end-of-life (EOL) journey. An infovisual may be able to communicate insights that are often communicated in words, but are much more powerfully communicated by example. Furthermore, an infovisual could facilitate vivid understanding of options and inspire the beginning of often-difficult conversations between care providers, patients and loved ones. It may also save clinicians’ time, as care providers may be able to spend less time explaining details of EOL care options. Use of an infovisual could assist in ensuring a well-planned EOL.