ArticleJournal of medical Internet research2018
Effect of Harm Anchors in Visual Displays of Test Results on Patient Perceptions of Urgency About Near-Normal Values: Experimental Study.
Article in Journal of medical Internet research, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 19 papers, 5 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
19 citing papers in PubMed, 5 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Patient Experiences With Online Laboratory Test Presentations From Access to Activation: Systematic Review.Journal of medical Internet research · 2026Pooled it
- Communicating blood test results in primary care: a mixed-methods systematic review.The British journal of general practice : the journal of the Royal College of General Practitioners · 2025Pooled it
- Enhancing Patient Understanding of Laboratory Test Results: Systematic Review of Presentation Formats and Their Impact on Perception, Decision, Action, and Memory.Journal of medical Internet research · 2024Pooled it
- A Systematic Review of Patient-Facing Visualizations of Personal Health Data.Applied clinical informatics · 2019Pooled it
- Information visualizations of symptom information for patients and providers: a systematic review.Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association : JAMIA · 2019Pooled it
- The effect of adding visual summaries to data visualizations on patient judgments of hypertension control.JAMIA open · 2026Article
- Article
- The application and challenges of ChatGPT in laboratory medicine.Advances in laboratory medicine · 2025Review
- Quality of Answers of Generative Large Language Models Versus Peer Users for Interpreting Laboratory Test Results for Lay Patients: Evaluation Study.Journal of medical Internet research · 2024Article
- Article
- When Positive is Negative: Health Literacy Barriers to Patient Access to Clinical Laboratory Test Results.The journal of applied laboratory medicine · 2023Article
- Annotation and Information Extraction of Consumer-Friendly Health Articles for Enhancing Laboratory Test Reporting.AMIA ... Annual Symposium proceedings. AMIA Symposium · 2023Article
- User-Centered System Design for Communicating Clinical Laboratory Test Results: Design and Evaluation Study.JMIR human factors · 2021Article
- Qualitative Evaluation of a Novel Educational Tool to Communicate Individualized Hip Fracture Prognostic Information to Patients and Surrogates: My Hip Fracture (My-HF).Geriatric orthopaedic surgery & rehabilitation · 2021Article
- Patient Challenges and Needs in Comprehending Laboratory Test Results: Mixed Methods Study.Journal of medical Internet research · 2020Article
- Primary Care Providers' Preferences and Concerns Regarding Specific Visual Displays for Returning Hemoglobin A1c Test Results to Patients.Medical decision making : an international journal of the Society for Medical Decision Making · 2019Article
- Parental Perceptions of Displayed Patient Data in a PICU: An Example of Unintentional Empowerment.Pediatric critical care medicine : a journal of the Society of Critical Care Medicine and the World Federation of Pediatric Intensive and Critical Care Societies · 2019Article
- Patient Judgments About Hypertension Control: The Role of Variability, Trends, and Outliers in Visualized Blood Pressure Data.Journal of medical Internet research · 2019Article
- Redesigning culturally tailored intervention in the precision health era: Self-management science context.Nursing outlookArticle
Corrections and comments
- Erratum issued
Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundPatient-facing displays of laboratory test results typically provide patients with one reference point (the "standard range").
objectiveTo test the effect of including an additional harm anchor reference point in visual displays of laboratory test results, which indicates how far outside of the standard range values would need to be in order to suggest substantial patient risk.
methodsUsing a demographically diverse, online sample, we compared the reactions of 1618 adults in the United States who viewed visual line displays that included both standard range and harm anchor reference points ("Many doctors are not concerned until here") to displays that included either (1) only a standard range, (2) standard range plus evaluative categories (eg, "borderline high"), or (3) a color gradient showing degree of deviation from the standard range.
resultsProviding the harm anchor reference point significantly reduced perceived urgency of close-to-normal alanine aminotransferase and creatinine results (P values <.001) but not generally for platelet count results. Notably, display type did not significantly alter perceptions of more extreme results in potentially harmful ranges. Harm anchors also substantially reduced the number of participants who wanted to contact their doctor urgently or go to the hospital about these test results.
conclusionsPresenting patients with evaluative cues regarding when test results become clinically concerning can reduce the perceived urgency of out-of-range results that do not require immediate clinical action.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.