A Comparison of Several Key Information Visualization Systems for Secondary Use of Electronic Health Record Content

An overview is provided of six information visualization systems designed specifically for gaining an overview of electronic health records (EHR). The systems discussed all make use of timelines: Lifelines, Lifelines2, KNAVE II, CLEF Visual Navigator, Timeline, and AsbruView. With the exception of Lifelines2, the main user groups targeted are physicians involved in direct patient care. Little attention has been paid towards supporting true secondary use of EHR contents, for activities such as assessing quality of care, patient health and safety monitoring, and clinical trial recruitment. Future work on such systems needs to address the complexity of EHR data, missing and incomplete information, and difficulties in displaying data with differing levels of granularity.