Interactive Visual Displays for Interpreting the Results of Clinical Trials: Formative Evaluation With Case Vignettes

• Published in: Journal of medical Internet research Vol. 20; no. 6; p. e10507
• Main Authors: Bian, Jiantao, Weir, Charlene, Unni, Prasad, Borbolla, Damian, Reese, Thomas, Wan, Yik-Ki Jacob, Del Fiol, Guilherme
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Canada Journal of Medical Internet Research 01.06.2018; Gunther Eysenbach MD MPH, Associate Professor; JMIR Publications
• Subjects: Clinical decision making; Clinical outcomes; Clinical research; Clinical trials; Clinical Trials as Topic - methods; Data Display - trends; Decision Making - physiology; Design; Displays (Marketing); Evaluation; Extensible Markup Language; Feedback; Female; Formative evaluation; Humans; Informatics; Information needs; Information Seeking Behavior - physiology; Internet; Male; Narratives; Original Paper; Physicians; Problem solving; Product development; Prototypes; Questionnaires; Software; Usability; User experience; Vignettes; Visualization; information display; clinical decision-making; information seeking behavior; clinician information needs; information foraging theory
• ISSN: 1438-8871; 1439-4456; 1438-8871
• DOI: 10.2196/10507

At the point of care, evidence from randomized controlled trials (RCTs) is underutilized in helping clinicians meet their information needs. To design interactive visual displays to help clinicians interpret and compare the results of relevant RCTs for the management of a specific patient, and to conduct a formative evaluation with physicians comparing interactive visual versus narrative displays. We followed a user-centered and iterative design process succeeded by development of information display prototypes as a Web-based application. We then used a within-subjects design with 20 participants (8 attendings and 12 residents) to evaluate the usability and problem-solving impact of the information displays. We compared subjects' perceptions of the interactive visual displays versus narrative abstracts. The resulting interactive visual displays present RCT results side-by-side according to the Population, Intervention, Comparison, and Outcome (PICO) framework. Study participants completed 19 usability tasks in 3 to 11 seconds with a success rate of 78% to 100%. Participants favored the interactive visual displays over narrative abstracts according to perceived efficiency, effectiveness, effort, user experience and preference (all P values <.001). When interpreting and applying RCT findings to case vignettes, physicians preferred interactive graphical and PICO-framework-based information displays that enable direct comparison of the results from multiple RCTs compared to the traditional narrative and study-centered format. Future studies should investigate the use of interactive visual displays to support clinical decision making in care settings and their effect on clinician and patient outcomes.