A Visual Decision Support System for Helping Physicians to Make A decision on New Drugs

International audienceWhen new drugs come onto the market, physicians have to decide whether they will consider the new drug for their future prescriptions. However, there is no absolute " right " decision: it depends on the physician's opinion, practice and patient base. Here, we propose a visual approach for supporting this decision using iconic, interactive and graphical presentation techniques for facilitating the comparison of a new drug with already existent drugs. By comparing the drug properties, the physician is aided in his decision task. We designed a prototype containing the properties of 4 new drugs and 22 "comparator" drugs. We presented the resulting system to a group of physicians. Preliminary evaluation results showed that this approach allowed physicians to make a decision when they were lacking information about the new drug, and to change their mind if they were overconfident in the new drug