Design of a Visual Interface for Comparing Antibiotics Using Rainbow Boxes

Stud Health Technol Inform. 2017:235:529-533.

Abstract

Non-optimal prescriptions of antibiotics have a negative impact on patients and population. Clinical practice guidelines are not always followed by doctors because the rationale of the recommendations is not always clear and can be difficult to understand. In this paper, we propose a new approach consisting in presenting the properties of antibiotics for allowing doctors to compare them and choose the most appropriate one. For that, we used and extended rainbow boxes, a new technique for overlapping set visualization. We tested our approach on 11 clinical situations related to urinary infections, and assessed the simplicity, the interest and utility with 11 doctors. 10 of them found that this approach was interesting and useful in clinical practice. Further studies are needed to confirm this preliminary work.

Keywords: Antibiotic prescription; Clinical Decision Support System; Usability; Visual analytics.

MeSH terms

  • Anti-Bacterial Agents / pharmacology*
  • Computer Graphics*
  • Humans
  • Physicians
  • Urinary Tract Infections / drug therapy*

Substances

  • Anti-Bacterial Agents