Interactive dashboard development for Irish general practices to visualise and compare patient data

BACKGROUND: Health information technology has increased worldwide, transforming health and healthcare programs in which information visualisation and visual analytics processes are central. However, aggregating and comparing patient data remains challenging. Therefore, a dashboard was developed with and for Irish general practitioners (GPs) to improve their understanding of their patient population, disease management and prescribing. This paper describes the design and development process of the CARA dashboard. METHODS: The design and development of the CARA dashboard used an Action Design Research approach, which consists of (1) problem formulation, (2) building, intervention and evaluation, (3) reflection and learning and (4) formalisation of learning. The process included interviews, to explore what type of information GPs need, as well as iterative testing of the CARA dashboard prototype. RESULTS: Key challenges identified from the interviews (Context, Sense-making, Audits, Relevancy, Action, Engagement and Ease of Use) formed the basis for the development of the CARA dashboard prototype. The first exemplar dashboard focused on antibiotic prescribing to develop and showcase the proposed platform, including automated audit reports, filters (within practice) and between-practice comparisons as well as a visual overview of practice demographics. CONCLUSIONS: User involvement in the design and development of the CARA dashboard is crucial to ensure GPs are enabled and supported to visually access and monitor their patients’ data. Next steps will include an exploratory study on dashboard engagement and the development of additional dashboards for topics such as chronic disease and mental health. KEY MESSAGES: • Good knowledge of operating systems, effective use of data, user interaction and context factors are required to design and implement an interactive dashboard. • Crucial components to make sense of the information provided in dashboards include the context, transparency about the data transformation processes and adherence to design principles.