Executive Summary
HealthViewer™ is a next-generation, interactive software that connects the doctor and patient. It’s a decision support tool (DST) used by providers to promote shared decision-making and by patients to understand the landscape of their diagnosis, the treatment options, and associated paths to maintaining and achieving better health. The software is designed for institutional adoption to raise the standard of patient education and involvement throughout the course of treatment. Health Information Technology such as HealthViewer™ can reduce provider liability and, by reducing extraneous tests and futile pursuits, save time and effort and reduce costs for all stakeholders.

Consistent with the latest research tenets on shared decision-making, the software is designed to be customized, enabling the possibility of creating proprietary condition templates, and ending with a given condition template being personalized for the patient throughout the course of the treatment. This medium strengthens patient participation by creating an easy to use point of reference for doctor-patient collaboration. As shown in the image below, a DST like HealthViewer™ intervenes at the right time, educating the patient and presenting the landscape of treatment options, key symptoms, avoidable progressions, and more.

Analytic Framework for DST Application1
The times call for software solutions that can work in conjunction with electronic health records to addresses quality of care and the experience of the patient. Patient literacy is a major issue.2 The mission of HealthViewer™ software is to ensure the patient is presented with simple and clear understanding of the entire landscape of their health situation. Providers experience frustration and difficulty when trying to be as thorough and clear with the patient as possible. In some cases, a nurse has the best advice for the patient, only because the doctor is too focused on moving towards a specialty surgical procedure. Examples like this occur often and can be avoided with the proper engagement, one that doesn’t represent a "best" course of action, but rather discloses the big picture so there is no information left off the table. Providers dedicated to engaging and empowering their patients will appreciate the segue HealthViewer™ provides them, as they shift responsibility to the patient, who can examine the condition map, the elements highlighted by the provider, and then come back to the table with the right questions.
Direct Benefits of the Software
HealthViewer™ was designed with these important goals in mind:

Allowing patients to recognize early on that a decision must be made

Giving the patient easy access to knowing all relevant and available options, such as characteristics of the ailment and expected outcomes of the treatment options
Presenting the provider with a simple and comprehensible medium for presenting to patients information that will affect the decision
Encouraging patients to discuss options with their loved ones and health care providers in a meaningful and deliberate way
Placing the provider and patient in a context conducive to shared decision-making, where a level playing field is available for discussing their preferences