HealthMap: a visual platform for patient suicide risk review

Misjudging suicide risk can be fatal. Risk assessment is complicated by multiplicity of risk factors, none of which individually can reliably predict risk. This paper addresses the need for better clinical support, visualising risk factors scattered in raw electronic medical records. HealthMap is a visual tool that helps clinicians effectively examine patient histories during a suicide risk assessment. We characterise the information visualisation problems accompanying suicide risk assessments. A design driven by visualisation principles was implemented. The prototype was evaluated by clinicians and accepted into daily clinical work-flow.