Reflections on interactive visualization of electronic health records: past, present, future

Abstract

Healthcare data of millions of people are now stored electronically, in Electronic Health Records (EHR). Although adoption has been gradual, EHRs are now standard across countries, promoting data exchange, opportunities for case comparison across institutions, and uniform diagnoses to improve care. In another stream of innovation, the advent of wearable devices affords users increased control in recording and assessing information about their health, with compact and affordable devices. Coupled with the rise of Artificial Intelligence, this sets the scene for unprecedented challenges and opportunities in terms of data scale, granularity, and availability. This shift offers a new perspective on “personal” health, but also introduces challenges. In this JAMIA Focus Issue, “Interactive Visualization of Health Data for Digital and Personal Health,” we investigate how visual analytics and the broader field of data visualization can provide novel solutions to support different stakeholders in healthcare to making sense of the information provided through data in clinical, research, and educational contexts. In particular, this special issue explores the present and future role of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in medicine and its various applications. Based on the common themes from these articles, we discuss and offer an assessment of the state of research at the intersection of health informatics, visualization, and AI.