Designing inpatient technology to meet the medication information needs of cardiology patients

Abstract

As patients are encouraged to become active participants in their own care, recent research has begun to explore the direct sharing of electronic health information with patients during hospital visits. The design of patient-facing views of clinical information is, however, a relatively recent line of inquiry. Research is needed to further understand guidelines for communicating specific types of information to hospital patients. In this work, we focus on cardiology patients' information needs related to their hospital medications. We assessed these needs to inform the design of interactive, electronic views of medication information for cardiology inpatients. We present results of in-situ interviews with 11 inpatients and 6 nurses in a cardiology step-down unit. Our findings suggest that cohesive trends in medication information needs exist across cardiology inpatients. We discuss interview results and their implications for the design of inpatient-facing information technology. We also discuss key ways in which electronic medication information, formatted for inpatient use, differs from that formatted for outpatient or transitional medication-management use.