Redesigning a new electronic health record is a design challenge because of all the different contexts of use. We wanted to design a health record for the patient that allows the patient to navigate easily through all their medical history.

How do you remember your medical history? Our research showed that people remembered their medical history on the basis of the different events - a test in the lab, or an encounter with the doctor - and that they are able to evaluate quite precisely the dates of these events. So we decided to get our inspiration from a well-known design: Facebook Timeline, which over 1 billion users are accustomed to. What could be more universal than that?

A timeline format makes sense to display chronological medical events. Because you have to be able to handle precise requests, we included a tagging system (on the left) and a search tool. The events are grouped in the timeline and the picture displays a photo indicating the source of the content.