Self-reflective visualizations of patient-centered health information systems

Abstract

Patient-centered systems have great potential to empower patients to take proactive actions in preventing or managing serious diseases and health problems and they can help to reduce healthcare costs. Commonly, these applications are equipped with visuals or graphical representations that enable users to comprehend their health progress. In this paper, we review and analyze the different types of health information visuals that are presented in popular self-monitoring applications and devices, i.e. web-based health support applications, mobile health support applications, stand-alone health monitoring devices, and wearable health monitoring devices. The aim is to gain better insights into designing self-reflective and comprehensible visualizations of health information in patient-centered systems. Results indicate that most of these applications present trends of monitored health data via visuals. Web-based applications feature more comprehensive and complex visuals than applications that are found in other platforms. Stand-alone and wearable devices are found to be more user-friendly and present data in the most simplified manner. There is a need to develop a guideline to aid developers to design effective visuals in patient-centered systems. © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019.