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Designing a medication timeline for patients and physicians

Objective
Most electronic health records display historical medication information only in a data table or clinician notes. We designed a medication timeline visualization intended to improve ease of use, speed, and accuracy in the ambulatory care of chronic disease.


Materials and Methods
We identified information needs for understanding a patient medication history, then applied human factors and interaction design principles to support that process. After research and analysis of existing medication lists and timelines to guide initial requirements, we hosted design workshops with multidisciplinary stakeholders to expand on our initial concepts. Subsequent core team meetings used an iterative user-centered design approach to refine our prototype. Finally, a small pilot evaluation of the design was conducted with practicing physicians.


Results
We propose an open-source online prototype that incorporates user feedback from initial design workshops, and broad multidisciplinary audience feedback. We describe the applicable design principles associated with each of the prototype's key features. A pilot evaluation of the design showed improved physician performance in 5 common medication-related tasks, compared to tabular presentation of the same information.


Discussion
There is industry interest in developing medication timelines based on the example prototype concepts. An open, standards-based technology platform could enable developers to create a medication timeline that could be deployable across any compatible health IT application.


Conclusion
The design goal was to improve physician understanding of a patient's complex medication history, using a medication timeline visualization. Such a design could reduce temporal and cognitive load on physicians for improved and safer care.