Graphic-Based Display of Clinical Pathology Lab Data
In this age of ever-increasing demands for and uses of patient data, technologic advancements in the form of electronic patient records permit improved data access and prompt retrieval of higher quality patient care data, with more versatility in display, facilitating the integration of information concerning patients over time and between settings of care, which is in turn more accessible for use by practitioners and provides more efficient and effective decision support in areas of patient care.

The graphic display of laboratory data is central to the evolving computerized patient record and needs to be taken into careful consideration along with clinician perception and ease of data interpretation in redesigning the graphic reporting of numeric clinical pathology laboratory data. An ideal system should generate user-friendly, graphic-based comprehensive reports highlighting abnormalities with trends for diagnosis, clinical management, and risk-factor detection.

We have come a long way in the evolution of laboratory results reporting from the application of overlapping laboratory requests with results to photocopying cumulative reports, through several generations of the current iteration of a computerized numeric display of clinical laboratory data. In the past, lack of attention to issues of graphic perception resulted in the use of data displays that convey quantitative information inadequately and in graphic methods that are ineffective.

More than 8 years ago, Powsner and Tufte published their landmark article on graphic reporting, which included a graphic prototype of a single laboratory measurement. Surprisingly, there has been virtually no subsequent implementation in laboratory information systems.

The purpose of this report is to promote a graphic-based, comprehensive, lifetime display of patients' numeric clinical pathology laboratory data, with an emphasis on patient care services within the hospital and ambulatory settings in a nonlinear, time-sequential mode to identify trends for diagnosis, management, treatment, and risk-factor detection. Advancement and enhancement of the graphic reporting of numeric laboratory results that permit clinicians to better use and understand laboratory data while maintaining brevity in a comprehensive, consolidated, computerized lifetime medical record will be offered.