Visualizing Health and Healthcare Data (eBook)

Kathy Rowell is a nationally recognized health, healthcare, and data visualization expert, lecturer, and author specializing in helping leading organizations analyze, design, and present visual displays of data to inform their decisions and stimulate effective action. She is the co-author of the Best Boring Book Ever (BBBE) of Healthcare Classification Systems and Databases, and BBBE of Tableau for Healthcare Professionals, which are used by numerous colleges and universities and professional organizations to teach and train students and professionals. Kathy is the Co-founder and Principal of HealthDataViz (HDV) where she has led innovative and ground-breaking projects and data visualization training initiatives for leading organizations such as Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and the Children's Hospital Association. A graduate of the University of NH and Dartmouth Medical School, Kathy lives in Maine and loves being on the water and cruising the coast with her family on their boat "Visualize." With seven years wholly immersed in healthcare data visualization, following ten years as a licensed marriage and family therapist, Lindsay brings a wealth of direct care experience and an unbridled passion and nationally recognized expertise for visualizing health and healthcare data. A Tableau Zen Master and member of the HealthDataViz (HDV) team, Lindsay is an enthusiastic creator of effective, intuitive, and beautiful dashboards that people love to use and make the story and opportunities buried in the data clear. Her passion for health and healthcare data knows no bounds evidenced by her establishment of #ProjectHealthViz, a community of passionate data visualizers that create displays of health and healthcare data each month to tell our health stories. Lindsay has a B.A. from Bucknell University and an M.A. from the University of Connecticut. She currently lives in Pennsylvania with her husband and two boys. Cambria Brown has over ten years of experience analyzing and visualizing health and healthcare data, and is a Tableau Desktop Certified Professional. With a background in public health, survey design, advanced biostatistics, and quality improvement, Cambria understands the full data use cycle and is passionate about helping organizations use data to improve health. As a member of the HealthDataViz team, she has developed beautiful, user-friendly, and high impact dashboards for a variety of clients including the New York City Dept. of Health and Mental Hygiene, the Colorado Dept. of Public Health and Environment, and the Urban Indian Health Institute. Cambria holds a Master of Public Health in Epidemiology and Biostatistics from Oregon Health & Science University. She lives in Colorado where, when not data vizzing, she enjoys going on adventures with her husband and two children.

Preface xiii

Section I Establishing a Framework and Process 1

Chapter 1 Health and Healthcare Data Visualizations of Historical Importance 3

Chapter 2 Stop Hunting Unicorns and Start Building Teams and Know The Data 9

Chapter 3 Requirements-Gathering and Design Methods 21

Section II Perceiving the Best Practices of Data Visualization 37

Chapter 4 The Research 39

Chapter 5 Table Design Checklist 55

Chapter 6 Powerful Visualizations in Four Shapes 59

Chapter 7 Maps 105

Chapter 8 Graphs and Charts to Never Use or Use with Caution 115

Chapter 9 Making Accessible Visualizations 149

Section III Creating Compelling Data Displays 159

Chapter 10 Dashboards, Reports, and Multidimensional Exploratory Displays (MEDs) 161

Chapter 11 Infographics 185

Section IV Closing Thoughts and Recommended Reading and Resources 195

Author Bios 203

References 207