Developing Design Guidelines for Precision Oncology Reports

TL;DR

This paper develops standardized design guidelines for precision oncology reports by understanding oncologists' needs through interviews and surveys, aiming to improve report effectiveness and consistency.

Contribution

It introduces a set of design criteria for oncology reports and creates a prototype based on oncologist feedback, addressing the lack of standardization.

Findings

Oncologists prefer clear, concise report formats.

Design guidelines improve report usability.

Prototype reports received positive feedback.

Abstract

Precision oncology tests that profile tumors to identify clinically actionable targets have rapidly entered clinical practice. Effective visual presentation of the results of these tests is crucial in accurate clinical decision-making. In current practice, these results are typically delivered to oncologists as static prints, who then incorporate them into their clinical decision-making process. However, due to a lack of guidelines for standardization, different vendors use different report formats. There is very little known on the effectiveness of these report formats or the criteria necessary to improve them. In this study, we have aimed to identify both the tasks and the needs of oncologists from precision oncology report design and then to improve the designs based on these findings. To this end, we report results from multiple interviews and a survey study (n=32) conducted with practicing oncologists. Based on these results, we compiled a set of design criteria for precision oncology reports and developed a prototype report design using these criteria, along with feedback from oncologists.