Healthcare visits are often brief, making efficient review and synthesis of PRO data key. Visual cues can alert a provider to important aspects of a report. Appropriately executed, these enhancements increase an ePRO report’s effectiveness.
Using visual cues (e.g., bolding, symbols, and color) can direct a provider’s attention to important, urgent, or other primary PRO information. Visual cues may be used within ePRO reports to draw attention to:
Enterprise systems (i.e., software applications designed to work broadly, not just in individual settings) should promote visual cue standardization to facilitate common understanding across the health organization. However, some exceptions may be necessary at the individual health unit level (e.g., the healthcare setting) to accommodate specific contextual nuances.
Some strategies for applying visual cues to showcase key information are described in Table 4F.
| Strategy Consideration | PRO tips |
|---|---|
| Color: hue and value |
Color is used to indicate the severity of PRO scores, to designate significant changes in score (via change in color), to provide a visual alert, or to indicate a patient’s status in relation to the PRO assessment. The use of color should be judicious and attuned to potential challenges:
|
| Bolding | Bolding is most often used in ePRO reporting to enhance key text-based information that is part of an explanation; it may also be used for alerts or to set off ePRO report titles and subtitles. |
| Size of text or pictures | Larger text and pictures or graphs generally draw attention and signify more important information on ePRO reports and dashboards. |
| Annotation | Annotations are most often used in ePRO reporting to provide qualitative terms or explanations that complement quantitative data and are used to facilitate understanding and provide alerts. |
| Arrows | Arrows generally point to key elements of the PRO data. The number of arrows used should be minimized. |
| Shapes and symbols | Various shapes and symbols may be used to differentiate information, such as pre- and post-intervention PRO scores. Caution is needed to avoid the challenge of providing too many varying shapes and to ensure shape representation does not result in screen clutter and confusion. |
| In-text hovers | Explanations may be useful when providers are unfamiliar with certain aspects of a PRO or need reminders (e.g., how PRO scores are calculated, what are PRO benchmark scores). While useful to access when needed, this type of information is subordinate to direct PRO score information on ePRO reports. In-text hovers provide a means to subordinate these explanations, making them available only when a user places a cursor over a key word so that the explanation does not consume prime screen space. |
Figure 4P (i–iv) demonstrates that multiple forms of visual enhancement may be used in ePRO reports.
Figure 4P (i): Illustrations for color and annotations
Figure 4P (ii): Illustrations of use of color, annotation, and visual guidelines
Figure 4P (iii): Illustrations of the use of color and symbols
Figure 4P (iv): Illustrations of the use of symbols
The general challenge with introducing multiple visual enhancements in one report is to use the enhancements as complementary elements and avoid cluttering the screen in ways that create either visual or interpretive overload. Figure 4Q depicts the following goals to consider in making visual enhancements choices: Ensure that key information is clearly recognizable, may be easily interpreted, and appealing (i.e., beautification). Of these, in a choice situation, aspects of beautification may be best to forego, if there is a danger that key information may not easily be found or understood as a result of additional visual enhancements.
For additional insight on visually enhance key information on ePRO reports, see Recommended Resources related to:
