Designing a Personalized Health Dashboard: Interdisciplinary and Participatory Approach

BACKGROUND: Within the Dutch Child Health Care (CHC), an online tool (360° CHILD-profile) is designed to enhance prevention and transformation toward personalized health care. From a personalized preventive perspective, it is of fundamental importance to timely identify children with emerging health problems interrelated to multiple health determinants. While digitalization of children’s health data is now realized, the accessibility of data remains a major challenge for CHC professionals, let alone for parents/youth. Therefore, the idea was initiated from CHC practice to develop a novel approach to make relevant information accessible at a glance. OBJECTIVE: This paper describes the stepwise development of a dashboard, as an example of using a design model to achieve visualization of a comprehensive overview of theoretically structured health data. METHODS: Developmental process is based on the nested design model with involvement of relevant stakeholders in a real-life context. This model considers immediate upstream validation within 4 cascading design levels: Domain Problem and Data Characterization, Operation and Data Type Abstraction, Visual Encoding and Interaction Design, and Algorithm Design. This model also includes impact-oriented downstream validation, which can be initiated after delivering the prototype. RESULTS: A comprehensible 360° CHILD-profile is developed: an online accessible visualization of CHC data based on the theoretical concept of the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health. This dashboard provides caregivers and parents/youth with a holistic view on children’s health and “entry points” for preventive, individualized health plans. CONCLUSIONS: Describing this developmental process offers guidance on how to utilize the nested design model within a health care context.