The Importance of Data Visualization in Combating a Pandemic

Unleashing the global potential of public health: A framework for future pandemic response

Public health emergencies, especially pandemics, need to be managed globally, and on several levels, emphasizing the importance of leadership, communication, and synchronization of measures, data, and management plans in contrast to the management of the Coronavirus-19 pandemic, which illustrated diverse strategies employed by various nations. This paper aims to review and discuss whether globalized diseases in a globalized world should be managed by globalized public health. Using a systematic literature search, followed by a non-systematic literature review, selected studies were grouped into topics, and analyzed, using content analysis to enhance the conclusive results. The results present a roadmap towards a re-envisioned framework highlighting key areas of focus: data-driven decision-making, robust technology infrastructure, global cooperation, and ongoing public health education, as part of a coordinated global response. This article reveals the weaknesses of current pandemic management systems and recommends new steps to further strengthen the management of future pandemics.

A method for analyzing text using VOSviewer

The need for technical support for data handling and visualization solutions has increased in tandem with the complexity of today's data and information, that is of multiple sources, huge in size and of different formats. This study focuses on handling and analyzing text-based data. Despite many available text analysis tools, there is a high demand among researchers for easy- to-use tools yet scalable and with incomparable visualization features. Of recent, there has been a significant focus on utilizing VOSviewer, an open-source software for bibliometric analysis. This software is able to analyze a significant amount of data and provide excellent network data mapping. However, there is a lack of existing work in evaluating this sophisticated tool for text analysis. Thus, this article explores the capability of VOSviewer and presents evidence-based implementation of this software for text analysis. Specifically, this study demonstrates the usage of VOSviewer to analyze text based on YouTube interviews related to ChatGPT. Hence, this study significantly contributes by processing textual data and producing visualization network maps that are different from bibliometric data. The study recognizes VOSviewer as a powerful tool for data visualization in mapping text data and illustrates the potential of this software for analyzing text networks in various fields. •The study illustrates how text analysis and visualization can be realized using VOSviewer, an open-source software mostly used for biblio- metric analysis.•The study presents the workflow indicating how the dataset can be prepared as input for VOSviewer for text analysis.•The study proves that VOSviewer is a powerful tool for data visualization and network mapping for any type of network data including transcripts from social media.

Operationalizing an open-source dashboard for communicating results of wastewater-based surveillance

COVID-19 saw the expansion of public health tools to manage the pandemic. One tool that saw extensive use was the public health dashboard, web-based visualization tools that communicate information to users in easy-to-read graphics. Dashboards were widely used prior to the pandemic, but COVID-19 saw expanded use and development. To date, dashboards have become an important part of public health surveillance programs around the world helping decisionmakers use data to evaluate different public health metrics including caseloads, hospitalizations, and environmental surveillance results from testing wastewater. Wastewater surveillance provides community-based, spatially relevant data on disease trends within communities to assess the scale of infection in a region, which makes it an excellent candidate for dashboard development to improve public health. We developed a dashboard for New York State's wastewater surveillance program using open-source, reproducible web programming. The dashboard we developed has been used for the COVID-19 response in New York, and our methods can be adapted to other programs and pathogens. We provide:•descriptions of how the dashboard was developed and maintained•specific guidance for reproducing our dashboard in other areas and for other pathogens•fully reproducible code with step-by-step instructions for researchers and professionals to make their own data dashboards.

Development of a usability checklist for public health dashboards to identify violations of usability principles

OBJECTIVE

To develop a usability checklist for public health dashboards.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

This study systematically evaluated all publicly available dashboards for sexually transmitted infections on state health department websites in the United States (N = 13). A set of 11 principles derived from the information visualization literature were used to identify usability problems that violate critical usability principles: spatial organization, information coding, consistency, removal of extraneous ink, recognition rather than recall, minimal action, dataset reduction, flexibility to user experience, understandability of contents, scientific integrity, and readability. Three user groups were considered for public health dashboards: public health practitioners, academic researchers, and the general public. Six reviewers with usability knowledge and diverse domain expertise examined the dashboards using a rubric based on the 11 principles. Data analysis included quantitative analysis of experts' usability scores and qualitative synthesis of their textual comments.

RESULTS

The dashboards had varying levels of complexity, and the usability scores were dependent on the dashboards' complexity. Overall, understandability of contents, flexibility, and scientific integrity were the areas with the most major usability problems. The usability problems informed a checklist to improve performance in the 11 areas.

DISCUSSION

The varying complexity of the dashboards suggests a diversity of target audiences. However, the identified usability problems suggest that dashboards' effectiveness for different groups of users was limited.

CONCLUSIONS

The usability of public health data dashboards can be improved to accommodate different user groups. This checklist can guide the development of future public health dashboards to engage diverse audiences.