Summary
Background: To organize an efficient interaction between a doctor and an EHR the data has to
be presented in the most convenient way. Medical data presentation methods and models
must be flexible in order to cover the needs of the users with different backgrounds
and requirements. Most visualization methods are doctor oriented, however, there are
indications that the involvement of patients can optimize healthcare.
Objectives: The research aims at specifying the state of the art of medical data visualization.
The paper analyzes a number of projects and defines requirements for a generic ISO
13606 based data visualization method. In order to do so it starts with a systematic
search for studies on EHR user interfaces.
Methods: In order to identify best practices visualization methods were evaluated according
to the following criteria: limits of application, customizability, re-usability. The
visualization methods were compared by using specified criteria.
Results: The review showed that the analyzed projects can contribute knowledge to the development
of a generic visualization method. However, none of them proposed a model that meets
all the necessary criteria for a re-usable standard based visualization method. The
shortcomings were mostly related to the structure of current medical concept specifications.
Conclusion: The analysis showed that medical data visualization methods use hard-coded GUI, which
gives little flexibility. So medical data visualization has to turn from a hardcoded
user interface to generic methods. This requires a great effort because current standards
are not suitable for organizing the management of visualization data. This contradiction
between a generic method and a flexible and user-friendly data layout has to be overcome.
Keywords
Data visualization - ISO 13606 - graphical user interface - archetype