The design and evaluation of a graphical display for laboratory data

Area of Science:

• Medical Informatics
• Human-Computer Interaction
• Clinical Data Visualization

Background:

• Healthcare information technology enables novel data presentation methods.
• Sparklines, a type of data-dense graphic, are proposed for medical data representation but lack extensive study.
• Understanding the impact of new display formats on clinical decision-making is crucial.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the effect of a novel laboratory display featuring sparklines on physicians' interpretation of medical data.
• To compare the effectiveness of graphical sparkline displays versus conventional table displays for assessing laboratory results.

Main Methods:

• Twelve physicians verbally assessed laboratory data for four pediatric intensive care unit patients.
• Data were presented using both a graphical sparkline display and a conventional table display.
• Physician verbalizations were analyzed for identified abnormal values and trends; assessment time was also measured.

Main Results:

• Physicians completed assessments significantly faster using the graphical display (3.6 min vs. 4.4 min, p=0.042).
• Thirty-seven percent of interpretations differed between the graphical and tabular displays.
• Graphs aided in identifying trends, while tables were better for spotting slightly abnormal values.

Conclusions:

• The format of data presentation significantly influences physician interpretation of laboratory results.
• Graphical displays offer advantages for certain data interpretation tasks but are not universally superior to numeric displays.
• Effective design of information displays requires consideration of user, task, and data characteristics.