News > Design of health information

This one day Patient Information Forum event explores the role of good graphic design in producing high quality health information for patients and the public. Good design invites people in and helps them to take part in a journey towards understanding "“ on the way building their confidence, reassuring them and helping them to make decisions about treatment and care. In essence effective graphic design is a foundation of great health information. During the morning sessions you will hear from speakers discussing some of the foundations of effective design and how to apply them in practice to your publications and web resources. The afternoon sessions focus on specific audiences and how to use design to maximise your message and the impact of your information. The event takes place on 20 June in Leeds. PiF members benefit from a reduced delegate rate.

In this year-long project, commissioned by the Department of Health and run by the Design Council, designers extensively observed patients and staff in A&E departments to identify the influences which lead to 'flare-ups' of anxiety or frustration in normally calm patients and those accompanying them. By studying patient behaviour and interactions with staff, including incidents of aggression, the team of designers, psychologists and healthcare experts discovered the key to the problem lies in providing patients with a better understanding of the system they are in, and to display the relevant information at specific moments in the patient journey through A&E where frustration and misunderstanding is likely to be exacerbated.

Usability issues may prevent older adults from easily accessing web based information. Prior research has shown that ageing is associated with a unique pattern of cognitive changes, and knowledge of these changes may be used in the design of health websites for older adults. This study examines the use of two different web site structures, one based on key words and another based on a hierarchy (folders). While younger adults outperformed older adults in the hierarchical set up, there were no significant age-related differences in the tag-based set up, indicating that older adults performed as well as younger adults in this area.

Experienced based design is a new way of bringing patients and staff together to share the role of improving care and re-designing services. It is being developed by the NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement as a way of helping NHS teams make the improvements their patients really want. Some of the techniques can be used in the design of information as well as services.

Researchers are testing to see whether pictures of squares, colored dots and simple charts can help patients make complicated medical decisions.

Guidance now available from the NHS Identity web site.

Your chance to comment on this new Department of Health guidance.

New guidance from the NPSA.