ClinicalPath: a Visualization tool to Improve the Evaluation of Electronic Health Records in Clinical Decision-Making

TL;DR

ClinicalPath is a visualization tool designed to help physicians analyze patient data more efficiently, improving decision-making confidence and saving time by presenting clinical history and test results longitudinally.

Contribution

The paper introduces ClinicalPath, a novel visualization system tailored for clinical data analysis, developed with medical experts to enhance decision-making in electronic health records.

Findings

Improves physicians' decision-making confidence

Reduces time spent analyzing patient data

Enhances user experience in clinical tasks

Abstract

Physicians work at a very tight schedule and need decision-making support tools to help on improving and doing their work in a timely and dependable manner. Examining piles of sheets with test results and using systems with little visualization support to provide diagnostics is daunting, but that is still the usual way for the physicians' daily procedure, especially in developing countries. Electronic Health Records systems have been designed to keep the patients' history and reduce the time spent analyzing the patient's data. However, better tools to support decision-making are still needed. In this paper, we propose ClinicalPath, a visualization tool for users to track a patient's clinical path through a series of tests and data, which can aid in treatments and diagnoses. Our proposal is focused on patient's data analysis, presenting the test results and clinical history longitudinally. Both the visualization design and the system functionality were developed in close collaboration with experts in the medical domain to ensure a right fit of the technical solutions and the real needs of the professionals. We validated the proposed visualization based on case studies and user assessments through tasks based on the physician's daily activities. Our results show that our proposed system improves the physicians' experience in decision-making tasks, made with more confidence and better usage of the physicians' time, allowing them to take other needed care for the patients.