Doctor of Philosophy

dissertationThe electronic health record (EHR) may not meet the information needs of clinicians and has been linked to patient harm and blamed for provider burnout. Problematic data presentation in the EHR is a key contributor to information overload and clinician errors. Omission errors due to misinterpreting or overlooking patient information are particularly concerning in critical care where the complexity and volume of information is high. Although researchers have explored novel information displays in critical care, few displays have been implemented to impact patient care and errors in critical care are still prevalent, which suggests gaps remain in designing effective information displays for critical care. Based on recent literature reviews of novel information displays in critical care, three guiding principles were derived to enable designing and evaluating an information display: 1) rigorous design methodology is needed; 2) displays must be adaptable for a dynamic healthcare environment; and 3) displays must be graphical and include trend information. The respective guiding principles led to a bottom-up approach encompassing three projects in this dissertation. The first study rigorously examined critical care information prioritization and organization. The second study explored an adaptable approach to information display with optimally designed modular graphical components (widgets). The third study experimentally evaluated a graphical display consisting of trend information widgets. This dissertation demonstrated that widget displays can improve physician decision making. Moreover, optimally designed widgets may be reused in a variety of information displays for different tasks and users. Especially in dynamic healthcare environments, such as critical care, an agile approach with widgets may bridge gaps associated with EHR and novel information displays. i