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W. Aigner, S. Miksch:
"CareVis: Interactive Visualization Methods to Support Protocol-Based Care";
Report for Asgaard-TR-2005-8; 2005; 28 pages.

Objective:
Computer supported protocol-based care aims to aid physicians in the treatment process. The main focus of current research is directed towards the formal methods and representations used "behind the scenes" of such systems. This work is trying to build the bridge towards medical domain experts in order to support their daily work tasks of getting aquanited with treatment methods, treating patients, and analyzing data.

Methods and Material:
We describe the development of CareVis - interactive visualization methods to support protocol-based care. The user-centered development approach applied for these interactive visualization methods has been guided by user input gathered via a user study, design reviews, and prototype evaluations.

Results:
CareVis integrates and combines classical data visualization with the visualization of treatment information in terms of logical structure and temporal aspects. We provide multiple simultaneous views to cover different aspects of a
complex underlying data structure of treatment plans and patient data. The tightly coupled views use visualization methods well-known to domain experts and are designed to facilitate users´ tasks.

Conclusion:
Our 3-step evaluation process showed that the integrated visualization of medical treatment plans and patient data helps to ease the complex and demanding tasks physicians have to face daily.

Key words:
protocol-based care, information visualization, clinical guidelines, treatment plans, patient data, user-centered design

http://publik.tuwien.ac.at/files/pub-inf_2997.pdf