Dashboard visualizations: Supporting real-time throughput decision-making

Area of Science:

• Emergency Medicine
• Health Informatics
• Human-Computer Interaction

Background:

• Effective emergency department (ED) care necessitates managing both individual patients and overall departmental flow.
• Previous workflow improvements focused on strategic changes, often overlooking real-time clinician decisions.
• Clinicians' in-the-moment decisions are frequently based on local, rather than global, perspectives.

Purpose of the Study:

• To explore the potential of real-time information visualizations to enhance clinical decision-making in the ED.
• To improve emergency department patient flow and throughput times.
• To address the limitations of global strategic changes by supporting real-time, opportunistic workflow decisions.

Main Methods:

• Discussion of the design and implementation challenges of ED information visualizations.
• Development of a prototype "Throughput Dashboard" for real-time ED status representation.
• Leveraging previous research on clinician workflow decision-making perspectives.

Main Results:

• Information visualizations can provide a real-time, global view of the ED and patient status.
• Such visualizations have the potential to support in-the-moment clinical decision-making.
• The prototype Throughput Dashboard demonstrates a potential tool for improving ED flow.

Conclusions:

• Real-time information visualizations are crucial for supporting effective clinical decision-making in the ED.
• Visualizing the entire ED status can shift clinicians from local to global perspectives.
• Further development and implementation of tools like the Throughput Dashboard are needed to optimize ED operations.