Co-designing Customizable Clinical Dashboards with Multidisciplinary Teams: Bridging the Gap in Chronic Disease Care

Title of the Paper

Collaborative Design of Flexible and Customizable Clinical Information Dashboards: Bridging Gaps in Chronic Disease Care

Paper Information

• Subject Area: Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), Chronic Disease Care, and Health Information Visualization
• Keywords: Chronic Disease, Information Dashboard, Sensors, Collaborative Design, Customization, Multidisciplinary Clinical Teams

Research Background and Problem Statement

• Identified Problems or Challenges:

  • Chronic disease management imposes a significant burden on healthcare systems, especially highlighted during crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic.
  • Despite technological advancements providing abundant health data, these data have not been fully translated into practical clinical value to improve patient care.
  • Multidisciplinary teams face communication challenges in information sharing, leading to time inefficiencies and a lack of tools for cross-disciplinary information integration.
  • Current dashboard designs often focus on single devices or short-term goals, failing to meet the needs for long-term monitoring and dynamic information sharing.

• Significance of the Research:

  • With the rising mortality rates of chronic diseases, there is an urgent need for effective monitoring, personalized care, and tools that optimize team collaboration.
  • Transforming the vast amounts of sensor-generated data into practical clinical applications is critical for improving the quality of patient care.

• Research Motivation and Related Work:

  • This study aims to design a customizable clinical information dashboard suitable for multidisciplinary teams, facilitating long-term monitoring of chronic diseases and promoting clinical information sharing.
  • It draws on key literature in continuous monitoring of chronic diseases, the application of visual analytics in healthcare, and stakeholder involvement in health technology design.

Proposed Solution

• Proposed Method or Solution:

  • Design a multidisciplinary clinical information dashboard with capabilities for personalized customization, real-time data monitoring, and information sharing.
  • Conduct the research in two stages:
    1. Focus group meetings to define information needs.
    2. Six co-design workshops with multidisciplinary teams to design the actual dashboard.

• Innovative Contributions:

  • Propose a two-tier dashboard structure: the first tier provides key summaries, while the second tier offers detailed assessment information.
  • The dashboard supports template imports and dynamic customization, allowing users to modify data presentation based on their needs.
  • Incorporate data sharing and cross-disciplinary team collaboration into the dashboard design, reducing redundant assessments and improving efficiency.

• Implementation Steps and Techniques:

  • Use paper and digital tools in focus groups to document daily clinical activities, relevant devices, and data needs.
  • Employ magnetic modules in workshops to assist participants in designing visualization schemes and exploring collaboration mechanisms among teams.
  • Code and thematically analyze the outputs to develop a dashboard design guideline.

Research Outcomes

• Specific Achievements:

  • Identified core goals for a multidisciplinary clinical information dashboard, including data integration, cross-disciplinary information sharing, and support for long-term chronic disease monitoring.
  • Provided four categories of data classification recommendations: patient information, hospitalization details, clinical assessment data, and home monitoring data.

• Advantages Over Existing Solutions:

  • Compared to traditional dashboards designed for single devices or fixed templates, the proposed approach emphasizes comprehensive data provision and support for multidisciplinary information sharing.
  • Focuses on dynamic customization and real-time update capabilities to meet the needs of different users and disease monitoring requirements, while supporting long-term monitoring.

• Experimental or Evaluation Results:

  • Multidisciplinary clinical teams designed six dashboard prototypes tailored to different departments during the workshops, showcasing diverse needs for data organization and visual components.
  • Identified key conditions influencing dashboard design, including workflow optimization, data dynamism, graphical representation, and cross-disciplinary collaboration mechanisms.

• Limitations and Future Directions:

  • The study sample was drawn from a single private clinical institution, and different healthcare environments may influence data and dashboard requirements.
  • Did not deeply explore privacy issues related to patient-generated data, necessitating further research on patient and clinical staff attitudes toward data sharing and security.
  • Future research is recommended to focus on the application of information dashboards in real clinical scenarios and explore their specific impact on doctor-patient interactions.

Conclusion

This paper explores how collaborative design of multidisciplinary clinical dashboards can improve chronic disease management, emphasizing the importance of personalized customization and the value of cross-disciplinary information sharing. The research outcomes provide a feasible dashboard framework and offer guiding insights for future clinical practice and health information technology research.