Designing A Pediatric Epilepsy Population Management Dashboard

Abstract

Rationale In the US, 460,000 children have epilepsy. Many respond well to treatment in the outpatient setting. It is unclear what the core concepts are that should be displayed for a population of children with epilepsy. The present research aims to advance visualizations for pediatric epilepsy population management by interviewing physicians to uncover these core concepts. Methods This is a qualitative methods research project. A convenience sample of pediatric neurology experts participated in a 20-minute interview designed to identify clinical concepts relevant to managing a population of children with epilepsy. We performed thematic analysis on the transcripts to generate a preliminary list of core concepts for display. In parallel, as the interviews were conducted, we developed prototype clinical dashboards to explore potentially relevant visualizations. Results The interview phase of the research concluded after 14 interviews. The clinical concepts extracted from interview analysis spanned 9 core topics, with 33 sub-categories. The progression of the prototype dashboards is shown in Figure 1. These potential dashboards illustrate the potential to display data related to geography, visit history, medications, imaging, and epilepsy diagnosis. A survey was distributed to rank category importance and difficult of extraction from electronic patient data. Conclusions There is a core set of clinical concepts relevant to identifying children with epilepsy with increased risk of emergency department visits. Of these clinical concepts, many are stored in the electronic health record, and could be readily extracted for use in clinical dashboards. Some clinical concepts are relevant in treating a population of pediatric epilepsy patients but are not readily available in patient data