Design of an Intelligent Patient Decision aid Based on Individual Decision-Making Styles and Information Need Preferences

An emerging trend in healthcare delivery is that of patient-centered medicine which includes empowering patients through shared decision-making in their medical care. The use of information technology is a key enabler for empowering patients and supporting patient-centered care. The patient decision aid is one tool for getting patients more involved in their care. However, existing patient decision aids make generalized assumptions about their users and fail to accommodate the variability of individual information needs and decision-making preferences known in the literature. In this paper, we investigate patient attributes that influence patient decision-making preferences and present a framework for the design of individualized patient decision aids. The proposed framework is instantiated in the context of end stage renal disease and was tested to evaluate its effectiveness.

Automated summary

The emerging trend in healthcare delivery is patient-centered medicine, which focuses on empowering patients and supporting patient-centered care through the use of information technology. Patient decision aids are tools that can help patients become more involved in their care, but current aids do not account for individual variability in information needs and decision-making preferences.