Improving access to clinical practice guidelines with an interactive graphical interface using an iconic language

Abstract

BackgroundClinical practice guidelines are useful for physicians, and guidelines are available on the Internet from various websites such as Vidal Recos. However, these guidelines are long and difficult to read, especially during consultation. Similar difficulties have been encountered with drug summaries of product characteristics. In a previous work, we have proposed an iconic language (called VCM, for Visualization of Concepts in Medicine) for representing patient conditions, treatments and laboratory tests, and we have used these icons to design a user interface that graphically indexes summaries of product characteristics. In the current study, our objective was to design and evaluate an iconic user interface for the consultation of clinical practice guidelines by physicians.MethodsFocus groups of physicians were set up to identify the difficulties encountered when reading guidelines. Icons were integrated into Vidal Recos, taking human factors into account. The resulting interface includes a graphical summary and an iconic indexation of the guideline. The new interface was evaluated. We compared the response times and the number of errors recorded when physicians answered questions about two clinical scenarios using the interactive iconic interface or a textual interface. Users’ perceived usability was evaluated with the System Usability Scale.ResultsThe main difficulties encountered by physicians when reading guidelines were obtaining an overview and finding recommendations for patients corresponding to “particular cases”. We designed a graphical interface for guideline consultation, using icons to identify particular cases and providing a graphical summary of the icons organized by anatomy and etiology. The evaluation showed that physicians gave clinical responses more rapidly with the iconic interface than the textual interface (25.2 seconds versus 45.6, p < 0.05). The physicians appreciated the new interface, and the System Usability Scale score value was 75 (between good and excellent).ConclusionAn interactive iconic interface can provide physicians with an overview of clinical practice guidelines, and can decrease the time required to access the content of such guidelines.

Formalisation de la sémantique des langages iconiques. Méthode à base d’ontologie et applications

“…Par la suite, le langage iconique a été étendu et d'autres applications ont été développées : (a) l'association d'icônes dans les dossiers patients, pour en faciliter la lecture [30], (b) l'aide à la consultation des guides de bonnes pratiques critiques, qui contiennent souvent de nombreux cas particuliers que les icônes permettent d'identifier plus facilement [27], et (c) l'utilisation dans les moteurs de recherche médicaux, pour faciliter la lecture des listes de résultats parfois longues et fastidieuses [8].…”

Graphical user interface design to improve understanding of the patient-reported outcome symptom response

“…GUI is a form of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices through graphical icons and visual indicators, instead of text-based interfaces [ 23 ]. The elements on the screen, such as color, size, and design, affect user satisfaction and understanding [ 24 ].…”

Formalization of the semantics of iconic languages: An ontology-based method and four semantic-powered applications

“…VCM was initially invented for presenting drug knowledge, such as the contraindications and adverse effects of a given drug in a drug database [5,7]. It was then extended for representing patient disorders and physiological states, with applications to medical search engines [8], clinical guidelines [9] and the visualization of patient health records [10]. During this decade of evolution, the need for semantics has been increasingly pressing as the language grew in size and complexity, and as the applications became more numerous.…”