Design and Evaluation of an Interactive Proof-of-Concept Dashboard for General Practitioners

Targeted follow-up meetings in general practice are important and missed often, because of both patient and general practitioners (GPs) related reasons. In this paper, we present a proof-of-concept interactive visualization dashboard that provides GPs with a powerful, yet easy to use method to identify those patients in need of follow-up. We applied a user centered, rapid prototyping methodology with 12 information visualization students and 15 GPs. We evaluated the final design using the evaluation framework by O'Leary et al., as well as a System Usability Scale questionnaire. Results indicate that there is indeed a need for a follow-up tool and that a dashboard is a right kind of tool. Our proof-of-concept shows useful insights into patient records and can indeed help GPs recognize patients in need of follow-up. The major strengths of the design are the ease with which GPs can query patient records using interactive visualizations, such as parallel coordinates, and the ability to check if the number of patients diagnosed with certain diseases differs from the amount predicted in evidence-based guidelines.