The Patient Perspective: Utilizing Information Visualization to Present Health Records to Patients

Abstract

Electronic health records (EHRs) are being adopted into healthcare. At the same time patients has begun to take greater interest in their own health and personal health records (PHRs) are increasingly gaining attention. This thesis explores:(1) The patients perspectives towards gaining access to their EHR data through a PHR system, and how these perspectives affect health record visualization,(2) if patients benefit from information visualization when presented with health records,(3) and if it is feasible to utilize information visualization techniques derived from state-of-the-art EHR visualization to present health data to patients.During this project, an online questionnaire was conducted, a case study investigating functional appropriateness and usability was executed, and a feasibility analysis of genuine usage was performed.The results suggests that patients are very interested in gaining online access to their health records, that they want extensive insight to their EHR data, and that they are very open to the idea of sharing any information they were to supplement the health record with. Many of the visualizations techniques developed for practitioners seems to be transferable to patients. Utilizing information visualization when presenting health records to patients seems to be more functional appropriate than presenting them in a text-based tabular format. In addition, the results indicate that it is feasible to present health events as an interactive timeline to patients.