摘要： High quality health care should include an informed patient who participates in treatment decisions. This is especially important when patients undergo complex treatments with multiple procedures that may span long time periods, as is the case for many hematologic diseases. However, comprehensive patient information is often hindered by communication gaps, which are exacerbated by declining cognitive performance of elderly patients. Here we describe our approach to support patients with visual treatment plans. Visual aids have been demonstrated to improve communication, but patient information so far is predominantly auditory, assisted with written information. To assess the information need, we first observed patient education meetings and interviewed physicians. We then developed prototype visual treatment plans for CAR-T cell therapy of lymphoma and for autologous transplantation in Multiple Myeloma patients. We then used a survey to evaluate the understandability and benefit of our visual treatment plans. Our data show that visual aids significantly improved information recall, when compared to auditive-only information. Moreover, participants stated that they were more confident in answering questions with our visual aids. The visual treatment plans combine minimal text with pictograms and icons; we next analyzed the clarity of these icons and showed that, despite being highly abstracted, they were identifiable by participants. Visual aids will only be used if they are easy for physicians to use and for patients to understand. We currently include patients in a feasibility trail of visual treatment plans, which actively involves our patient advisory board. We used a questionnaire to survey information recall in patients and, with a limited number of patients, also comprehension several weeks after the meeting. In addition we also surveyed for both patients and physicians if using the visual aids was subjectively beneficial. We plan to next analyze the benefit of visual treatment plans in a controlled clinical trial. As the complexity of new therapeutic algorithms can overwhelm patients, we believe that visual aids can facilitate patients' understanding, compliance, and quality of life.