Seeing is Believing: Using Visualisations of Medical Disease and Treatment to Improve Patient Adherence

Abstract

The effective understanding of health information is essential to inform adaptive patient health behaviours, such as adherence to treatment. Despite developments in our understanding of pathological processes and innovative treatments, patient comprehension and health literacy remains problematic. The format and delivery of health information can influence the accurate comprehension, retention, and implementation of medical advice. Visualisation is a type of visual health information which represents internal bodily processes of disease and treatments. Visual health information has increased salience and encoding within memory, and can break down barriers imposed by literacy and unfamiliar terminology. Initial work demonstrates that visualisation can improve perceptions, understanding, and subsequent health behaviours, although significant gaps in understanding are evident. This thesis intended to extend the current literature by addressing several aims. The research aimed to establish the efficacy of different formats of visualisation across different healthcare trajectories. These studies also aimed to provide an understanding of which populations may find visualisation most effective. More broadly, this thesis aimed to provide further understanding of visualisation as an intervention technique to improve health behaviours. Specifically, this thesis investigated whether visualisation interventions could improve objective health outcomes in patients with both acute and chronic conditions