The Communication and Care Plan: a novel approach to patient-centered clinical information systems

The US health care system and its information access models are organized around institutions and providers. Patient-centered functionality is rarely present in prevailing information systems and, if present, it typically does not ideally support shared decision making about important treatment events. We sought to better understand the functional needs of providers and patients around the process of care plan decision making, and used this information to develop a prototype decision support tool, using women with newly diagnosed breast cancer as our clinical scenario. This paper describes the user-centered design process we undertook and the resulting prototype system, the Communication and Care Plan (CCP).