Participatory Design and Development of a Patient-centered Toolkit to Engage Hospitalized Patients and Care Partners in their Plan of Care.

Patient engagement has been identified as a key strategy for improving patient outcomes. In this paper, we describe the development and pilot testing of a web-based patient centered toolkit (PCTK) prototype to improve access to health information and to engage hospitalized patients and caregivers in the plan of care. Individual and group interviews were used to identify plan of care functional and workflow requirements and user interface design enhancements. Qualitative methods within a participatory design approach supported the development of a PCTK prototype that will be implemented on intensive care and oncology units to engage patients and professional care team members developing their plan of care during an acute hospitalization.