Abstract. A Patient Care Record (PCR) is often used by Emergency Medical Technicians (EMT) and paramedics to provide a documented record of care provided to the patient, and serve as a mean of communication among clinicians for pre-hospital and future care. The electronic form of the PCR adopted by many Emergency Medical Services (EMS) is the electronic Patient Care Record (ePCR). Based on discussions with emergency room physicians it was found that the information provided by ePCRs and PCRs was helpful in providing an accurate record of the patient’s condition throughout their pre-hospital care. It was noted however that the way in which information was currently represented sometimes overloaded physicians with too much irrelevant data or was otherwise not presented in a usable fashion.

This project attempts to address some of the weaknesses of the current ePCR systems using user-centered and task-centered design [9] and the inclusion of several visualization techniques and principles [10] in a prototype ePCR. . A usability study was used to if the alternate representations of patient data implemented in the prototype allows emergency physicians to be more aware of a patient’s condition and allow them interpret a patient’s medical narrative faster.