Engaging Stakeholders in Reporting Adverse Drug Events With a Common Visual Language

"Partnership for Patients: Better Care Low Costs" and "Meaningful Use of HIT" are HHS initiatives designed for shifting control and power from caregivers to patients, to make care truly "patient-centered." There is a pressing need to develop methods of inviting/engaging/enabling patients to increase the quality and frequency of reports to help improve health care quality. We propose a Visual Learning and Communication System (VLCS) to meet this need. Embedded in VLCS is a Visual Error Reporting System (VERS). The objectives are to (a) help prevent adverse events in the first place, (b) detect errors, (c) ameliorate their effects, and (d) empower patients to propose interventions for safety improvement. Visualization has the potential to be an excellent conduit for seamless flow of meaningful information to and from other stakeholders and to foster a common culture of quality and value and make information useful for patients and providers at the point of care.