Reducing Cognitive Workload in Electronic Health Records through the Visualization of Clinically Meaningful Patterns

Electronic health record (EHR) systems have the potential to both reduce and increase the cognitive workload experienced by clinicians resulting from the presentation and organization of data. Here we describe how three novel EHR prototypes influences the cognitive workload of physicians when completing a clinical task. Our results suggest EHR systems that highlight and feature clinically meaningful patterns instead of forcing users to search, find and keep in memory the details required to identify the same patterns reduce cognitive workload during clinical decision making.