Michel Azar

Doris Houng

Joshua Kohn

Jocelyn Naylor

Brian Tennity

*

*The Problem

*Studies show that side effects of drugs and drug interactions are responsible for 7% of hospital admissions

*When left alone, very serious complications can develop, and adverse drug reactions (ADRs) can account for an unexpectedly large percentage of patient deaths

*Patients need all the tools they can get to help them research their own health problems, as the medical industry isn’t always able to catch problems before serious complications occur

*Existing solutions

*Most common style– enter medications, and look at any problems that interactions between the medications could cause

*This example comes from the AARP website

*Does not allow for user profiles and thus can’t check for personalized symptoms and risks

*Existing Solutions

*Rxplore, created by Dr. Jon Duke, is most similar to our product*Allows doctors to check the probability of a patient’s symptoms being caused by a prescription regimen*We intend to make our product more for the patients, rather than doctors

*Our Solution

*A model to predict how likely it is that a user’s symptoms are caused by medications or drug interactions

*Based on personalized medical history

*Account creation allows users to change their medications without having to re-enter information

*The Product

*Simplicity is key

*Once an account has been established, the only two screens a user interacts with are the log-in page and the dashboard

*Screenshots

First page a user encounters– log in or create an account

Users create an account by entering all required fields

Dashboard

*Includes an option to log out, a table of symptoms, and an easy-to-update list of medications

*Table consists of symptom name, drug that could be causing it, and probability that the symptom and medication are related

*Usability Tests

*Three tasks related to the same fictional person

*Testing the functionality and aesthetic appeal of the product, as well as the ease with which users can complete common tasks

*Tasks included creating an account, adding medications, searching for symptoms, changing medications, and finding probabilities associated with symptoms

*Pre/Post-Test Questionnaire

*Pre-test Questionnaire: General questions about the user’s age, gender, experience with technology/the internet, and whether the user takes medications

*Post-test Questionnaire: Several questions related to the aesthetic appeal and the ease with which the tasks were performed, rated from 1 (high) to 7 (low).

*Would you use this product if it were released to the public?

*Results

*Common suggestions:

*Use brand names for medications

*Redesign product so that less scrolling is required

*Organize symptoms more efficiently/allow the user to personalize symptoms that may be in the list

*Future Plans for Functionality

*This product can be further developed

*Coming back to our original goals, we would like the user to have a very personal experience using this product

*Users should be able to search for symptoms, or at least personalize the order in which symptoms are listed

*Symptoms that are related to drug interactions or allergies and chronic illnesses should also be included, on a personalized level

*Expand database of medications

*Future Plans for Site Design

*Allow users to submit feedback

*Users should be given a point of contact to whom they can submit any complaints, problems, questions, suggestions or positive comments

*Allow users to filter symptoms after adding a medication

*Acknowledgements

*We would like to thank our usability test subjects, Professor Shneiderman and Tak Yeon Lee, and, most of all, our wonderful mentors:

*Dr. Dean Sitting- University of Texas

*Dr. Allison McCoy- University of Texas

*Dr. Adam Wright- Clinical Decision Support Consortium

*Additionally, we would like to thank Dr. Jon Duke of the Regenstrief Institute of Indiana University for providing us with data on drug interactions for our database.