The influence of display format on decision-making in a lung transplant home monitoring program-preliminary results

Transplant recipients participating in the lung transplant home monitoring program at the University of Minnesota use portable electronic spirometers to record daily pulmonary function parameters and symptom information, which is reviewed weekly by a team of clinicians for early signs of infection and/or rejection. We present the preliminary results from experiments designed to determine whether the display format of the information presented to clinicians influences decision accuracy or time for this detection task. In two experiments, clinicians were shown randomly-ordered displays of patient home monitoring data, presented in a variety of formats (line graphs, tables, hybrid graph-tables, and control charts), and media (paper or computer screen) and asked to render probability-based decisions on whether the data indicated a possible infection/rejection event. Decision time and display preferences were also recorded. Results indicated no statistically significant difference in accuracies or times between formats in either experiment, though a possible trend favoring graphical displays was observed in both measures. Readers also tended to prefer the graphical displays. We conclude that screen-based, graphical displays of pulmonary data would be well-accepted, efficacious tools in clinical practice.