Promoting online access to patients’ health records

U.S. Department of Health & Human Services

Seven upraised arms wearing a smart watch or holding a smartphone or tablet in their hands.

In the United States, patients have the legal right to access their own health information held by doctors, hospitals, and other providers. In the past, most medical information was stored in paper files, but that is changing as our health care system goes digital.

 

The Blue Button movement is dedicated to advancing a health care system in which patients and providers use information technology to collaborate and improve health outcomes. The presence of the Blue Button logo on a provider’s website indicates that the website gives patients convenient and secure electronic access to their own health records in a format that is easy to use.

 

Thanks to Blue Button, patients can view and download the vital health information they need to keep track of their medicines, chronic conditions, and laboratory results and to be more engaged in their health care.

SERVICES

research
content development
creative direction
design
data visualization
digital media

THE CLIENT

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) is the principal federal entity responsible for coordinating nationwide efforts to implement the most advanced health information technology and the electronic exchange of health information. ONC focuses on two strategic objectives: advancing the development and use of health IT capabilities and establishing expectations for data sharing. ONC is a staff division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

THE PROBLEM

The Blue Button movement is growing, and ONC was seeking to advance the adoption of the technology by educating patients and providers about its benefits.

THE SOLUTION

All Things Creative created a series of infographics for HealthIT.gov, the official website of ONC, that provided an overview of the importance of online access to patient health records and educated patients and providers about the benefits of using Blue Button. We also created communications for social media and for ONC PowerPoint presentations.

THE APPROACH

Our main challenge in creating the infographics was to distill very dense and complicated data and communicate it in a way that made the information easy for general, non-technical audiences to understand.

 

After reviewing a series of lengthy data briefs, we worked closely with ONC data analysts, first to ensure that we understood the data and then to determine what data would be most compelling for the target audiences, to restructure it, and to present it accurately.

 

This process enabled us to develop a series of infographics for ONC’s website that reflected ONC’s campaign goals and communicated effectively to patients and providers about using Blue Button. We created individual infographics that were tailored specifically to each target audience.

 

We developed a visual style for the series that incorporated the Blue Button branding so that each infographic would be recognizable as part of the campaign. By maintaining a consistent style for typography, iconography, illustrations, color, and layout for all of the infographics, we ensured that each new infographic we created complemented the others and enhanced the collective impact of the entire series.

 

We also created a series of individual graphics for social media that were based on the infographics. The goal was to present the information in a format that could be shared on Twitter.

 

In addition, we developed PowerPoint presentations that ONC could use at its annual meeting to highlight key statistics about electronic health records.

NEXT PROJECT

Increasing public awareness of a statewide suicide prevention hotline