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Presentation of laboratory test results in patient portals: influence of interface design on risk interpretation and visual search behaviour
BACKGROUND: Patient portals are considered valuable instruments for self-management of long term conditions, however, there are concerns over how patients might interpret and act on the clinical information they access. We hypothesized that visual cues improve patients’ abilities to correctly interp...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
BioMed Central
2018
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5809992/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29433495 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12911-018-0589-7 |
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author | Fraccaro, Paolo Vigo, Markel Balatsoukas, Panagiotis van der Veer, Sabine N. Hassan, Lamiece Williams, Richard Wood, Grahame Sinha, Smeeta Buchan, Iain Peek, Niels |
author_facet | Fraccaro, Paolo Vigo, Markel Balatsoukas, Panagiotis van der Veer, Sabine N. Hassan, Lamiece Williams, Richard Wood, Grahame Sinha, Smeeta Buchan, Iain Peek, Niels |
author_sort | Fraccaro, Paolo |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: Patient portals are considered valuable instruments for self-management of long term conditions, however, there are concerns over how patients might interpret and act on the clinical information they access. We hypothesized that visual cues improve patients’ abilities to correctly interpret laboratory test results presented through patient portals. We also assessed, by applying eye-tracking methods, the relationship between risk interpretation and visual search behaviour. METHODS: We conducted a controlled study with 20 kidney transplant patients. Participants viewed three different graphical presentations in each of low, medium, and high risk clinical scenarios composed of results for 28 laboratory tests. After viewing each clinical scenario, patients were asked how they would have acted in real life if the results were their own, as a proxy of their risk interpretation. They could choose between: 1) Calling their doctor immediately (high interpreted risk); 2) Trying to arrange an appointment within the next 4 weeks (medium interpreted risk); 3) Waiting for the next appointment in 3 months (low interpreted risk). For each presentation, we assessed accuracy of patients’ risk interpretation, and employed eye tracking to assess and compare visual search behaviour. RESULTS: Misinterpretation of risk was common, with 65% of participants underestimating the need for action across all presentations at least once. Participants found it particularly difficult to interpret medium risk clinical scenarios. Participants who consistently understood when action was needed showed a higher visual search efficiency, suggesting a better strategy to cope with information overload that helped them to focus on the laboratory tests most relevant to their condition. CONCLUSIONS: This study confirms patients’ difficulties in interpreting laboratories test results, with many patients underestimating the need for action, even when abnormal values were highlighted or grouped together. Our findings raise patient safety concerns and may limit the potential of patient portals to actively involve patients in their own healthcare. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s12911-018-0589-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-5809992 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2018 |
publisher | BioMed Central |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-58099922018-02-16 Presentation of laboratory test results in patient portals: influence of interface design on risk interpretation and visual search behaviour Fraccaro, Paolo Vigo, Markel Balatsoukas, Panagiotis van der Veer, Sabine N. Hassan, Lamiece Williams, Richard Wood, Grahame Sinha, Smeeta Buchan, Iain Peek, Niels BMC Med Inform Decis Mak Research Article BACKGROUND: Patient portals are considered valuable instruments for self-management of long term conditions, however, there are concerns over how patients might interpret and act on the clinical information they access. We hypothesized that visual cues improve patients’ abilities to correctly interpret laboratory test results presented through patient portals. We also assessed, by applying eye-tracking methods, the relationship between risk interpretation and visual search behaviour. METHODS: We conducted a controlled study with 20 kidney transplant patients. Participants viewed three different graphical presentations in each of low, medium, and high risk clinical scenarios composed of results for 28 laboratory tests. After viewing each clinical scenario, patients were asked how they would have acted in real life if the results were their own, as a proxy of their risk interpretation. They could choose between: 1) Calling their doctor immediately (high interpreted risk); 2) Trying to arrange an appointment within the next 4 weeks (medium interpreted risk); 3) Waiting for the next appointment in 3 months (low interpreted risk). For each presentation, we assessed accuracy of patients’ risk interpretation, and employed eye tracking to assess and compare visual search behaviour. RESULTS: Misinterpretation of risk was common, with 65% of participants underestimating the need for action across all presentations at least once. Participants found it particularly difficult to interpret medium risk clinical scenarios. Participants who consistently understood when action was needed showed a higher visual search efficiency, suggesting a better strategy to cope with information overload that helped them to focus on the laboratory tests most relevant to their condition. CONCLUSIONS: This study confirms patients’ difficulties in interpreting laboratories test results, with many patients underestimating the need for action, even when abnormal values were highlighted or grouped together. Our findings raise patient safety concerns and may limit the potential of patient portals to actively involve patients in their own healthcare. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s12911-018-0589-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. BioMed Central 2018-02-12 /pmc/articles/PMC5809992/ /pubmed/29433495 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12911-018-0589-7 Text en © The Author(s). 2018 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Fraccaro, Paolo Vigo, Markel Balatsoukas, Panagiotis van der Veer, Sabine N. Hassan, Lamiece Williams, Richard Wood, Grahame Sinha, Smeeta Buchan, Iain Peek, Niels Presentation of laboratory test results in patient portals: influence of interface design on risk interpretation and visual search behaviour |
title | Presentation of laboratory test results in patient portals: influence of interface design on risk interpretation and visual search behaviour |
title_full | Presentation of laboratory test results in patient portals: influence of interface design on risk interpretation and visual search behaviour |
title_fullStr | Presentation of laboratory test results in patient portals: influence of interface design on risk interpretation and visual search behaviour |
title_full_unstemmed | Presentation of laboratory test results in patient portals: influence of interface design on risk interpretation and visual search behaviour |
title_short | Presentation of laboratory test results in patient portals: influence of interface design on risk interpretation and visual search behaviour |
title_sort | presentation of laboratory test results in patient portals: influence of interface design on risk interpretation and visual search behaviour |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5809992/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29433495 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12911-018-0589-7 |
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