Exploring Patient-Generated Annotations to Digital Clinical Symptom Measures for Patient-Centered Communication

Patients' self-reports are crucial for effective care management of clinical conditions involving subjective symptoms. While patients often value the ability to bring in different forms of self-report data to convey their lived experiences, they often struggle to make their data practically usable in clinical settings. To better center patient needs in communicating illness experiences in clinical contexts, we explore the idea of patient annotations to digital clinical self-report measures, specifically in the context of discontinuing antidepressants. Through interviews with 20 patients with AT Annotator, a digital aid to introduce the concept of annotations, we found that participants perceived annotations to digital clinical measures as a means to enrich self-report measures and reduce the cognitive and emotional burden of logging. However, concerns were raised regarding potential disruptions in patient-provider relationships and the sensitive and complex nature of mental health contexts. We discuss opportunities for annotations to promote patient-centered communication by balancing with clinical practicality and incorporating customization support for patients' communication needs.