Health Stories: Bringing Medical History to Life

Winner of the 2019 Burlington Data Science Golden Flame Award, Katie McCurdy will expand on the very popular talk she gave at our rapid fire session last January.

ABOUT THIS TALK...
Our communication with our doctors is broken. Ineffective processes and systems prevent us from telling rich stories – the kind we need to fully understand each other. As a result, many patients aren't getting the correct diagnosis; 12 million people in the U.S. are misdiagnosed or remain undiagnosed each year. Patients with invisible symptoms or those who have especially complicated backgrounds suffer most. They often aren't understood or believed by their doctors, and they end up repeating their stories over and over.

Visuals can help us communicate more efficiently and develop a better mutual understanding. Presenter and designer Katie McCurdy has experienced this firsthand; as a patient with multiple autoimmune conditions, she has used drawings, graphs, timelines and other visuals in her doctor appointments to make better use of our short time together and help them ‘see’ what she is experiencing.

These experiences inspired her to start a company called Pictal Health to bring visual communication to more patients and doctors. Pictal Health helps people put together detailed timelines, symptom maps, and a neat and organized summary of their health history so that they can see and understand what happened, tell their story with confidence, and work together better with their doctors.

After piloting an intensive, supportive health history visualization process with over 50 patients and healthcare providers, Katie has learned key insights about how others represent their symptoms and stories, what elements of our stories are important to ‘show’ to our doctors, how to avoid overwhelming visual representations, and more. She is excited to share all of this with you!

ABOUT THE SPEAKER...
Katie McCurdy is an autoimmune patient, designer, and founder of Pictal Health. She is on a mission to use visual communication and human-centered design to help patients tell their stories, help providers focus on the work they love, and facilitate better collaboration between all healthcare stakeholders.

Before starting Pictal Health, Katie consulted with the University of Vermont Medical Center, working to improve the patient and provider experience using human-centered design. Prior to that, she designed apps and products for startups Medal, Medivo, and Notabli; health data non-profit Open mHealth; and clients like LabCorp, Verizon and Johnson & Johnson.

She holds a Masters of Science in Information with a specialization in Human-Computer Interaction from the University of Michigan School of Information. She lives, skis, hikes, and eats chocolate in Burlington, VT. Learn more about Katie at katiemccurdy.com.