Interactive Visual Analysis of Patient-Reported Outcomes for Improved Cancer Aftercare

Abstract

The monitoring and planning of cancer aftercare are commonly based on clinical, physiological and caregiver-reported outcome measures. More recently, patient-reported outcome (PRO) measures, capturing social, psychological, and financial aspects, are gaining attention in the course of establishing a patient-centered healthcare system. PROs are acquired during regular aftercare consultations where patients are asked to fill in questionnaires. We present an interactive visual analysis (IVA) approach to investigating PROs. The approach is applied in clinical routine during the aftercare consultation to assess the development of the particular patient, to compare this development to those of similar patients, and to detect trends that may require an adaptation of the aftercare strategy. Furthermore, the approach is employed in clinical research to identify groups of similarly developing patients and risk factors for poor outcomes, as well as to visually compare patient groups. We demonstrate the IVA approach in analyzing PROs of 1025 head and neck cancer patients. In an evaluation with 20 clinicians, we assessed the usefulness and usability of a prototypical implementation.