VisOSA: Visualizing Obstructive Sleep Apnea symptoms and comorbidities

Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA) is a common chronic disorder associated with significant morbidity and mortality. As a first step towards creating a healthcare IT Infrastructure for patient collaborative networks, this study aims to build a prototype system to visually present and monitor patient's health under treatment for OSA. We have worked with clinicians and collected the data by reviewing consecutive medical records of adult patients with severe OSA. Our design builds upon suitable visual representations under perceptual principles and design guidelines. As a result, we designed and implemented VisOSA a web-based prototype application. The objectives are: (1) to allow healthcare providers to explore patients' medical records at both individual and group levels, and (2) to support chronically ill patients, even with limited medical background, to interpret the laboratory test reports and thus to perform self-assessment using appropriate devices. A series of case studies justify VisOSA's viability in clinical disease management. The research contributions are twofold: (1) a well-reasoned justification of how existing information visualization techniques can usefully be combined to present medical data and, (2) the visual encoding and interaction mechanisms of comparing given quantitative measurements against qualitative ranges, which are applicable to various domains in presenting laboratory test results.