Registering ethnicity for covid-19 research: is the law an obstacle?

Developing public health surveillance dashboards: a scoping review on the design principles

BACKGROUND

Public Health Dashboards (PHDs) facilitate the monitoring and prediction of disease outbreaks by continuously monitoring the health status of the community. This study aimed to identify design principles and determinants for developing public health surveillance dashboards.

METHODOLOGY

This scoping review is based on Arksey and O'Malley's framework as included in JBI guidance. Four databases were used to review and present the proposed principles of designing PHDs: IEEE, PubMed, Web of Science, and Scopus. We considered articles published between January 1, 2010 and November 30, 2022. The final search of articles was done on November 30, 2022. Only articles in the English language were included. Qualitative synthesis and trend analysis were conducted.

RESULTS

Findings from sixty-seven articles out of 543 retrieved articles, which were eligible for analysis, indicate that most of the dashboards designed from 2020 onwards were at the national level for managing and monitoring COVID-19. Design principles for the public health dashboard were presented in five groups, i.e., considering aim and target users, appropriate content, interface, data analysis and presentation types, and infrastructure.

CONCLUSION

Effective and efficient use of dashboards in public health surveillance requires implementing design principles to improve the functionality of these systems in monitoring and decision-making. Considering user requirements, developing a robust infrastructure for improving data accessibility, developing, and applying Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for data processing and reporting purposes, and designing interactive and intuitive interfaces are key for successful design and development.

Exploring Changes to the Actionability of COVID-19 Dashboards Over the Course of 2020 in the Canadian Context: Descriptive Assessment and Expert Appraisal Study

BACKGROUND

Public web-based COVID-19 dashboards are in use worldwide to communicate pandemic-related information. Actionability of dashboards, as a predictor of their potential use for data-driven decision-making, was assessed in a global study during the early stages of the pandemic. It revealed a widespread lack of features needed to support actionability. In view of the inherently dynamic nature of dashboards and their unprecedented speed of creation, the evolution of dashboards and changes to their actionability merit exploration.

OBJECTIVE

We aimed to explore how COVID-19 dashboards evolved in the Canadian context during 2020 and whether the presence of actionability features changed over time.

METHODS

We conducted a descriptive assessment of a pan-Canadian sample of COVID-19 dashboards (N=26), followed by an appraisal of changes to their actionability by a panel of expert scorers (N=8). Scorers assessed the dashboards at two points in time, July and November 2020, using an assessment tool informed by communication theory and health care performance intelligence. Applying the nominal group technique, scorers were grouped in panels of three, and evaluated the presence of the seven defined features of highly actionable dashboards at each time point.

RESULTS

Improvements had been made to the dashboards over time. These predominantly involved data provision (specificity of geographic breakdowns, range of indicators reported, and explanations of data sources or calculations) and advancements enabled by the technologies employed (customization of time trends and interactive or visual chart elements). Further improvements in actionability were noted especially in features involving local-level data provision, time-trend reporting, and indicator management. No improvements were found in communicative elements (clarity of purpose and audience), while the use of storytelling techniques to narrate trends remained largely absent from the dashboards.

CONCLUSIONS

Improvements to COVID-19 dashboards in the Canadian context during 2020 were seen mostly in data availability and dashboard technology. Further improving the actionability of dashboards for public reporting will require attention to both technical and organizational aspects of dashboard development. Such efforts would include better skill-mixing across disciplines, continued investment in data standards, and clearer mandates for their developers to ensure accountability and the development of purpose-driven dashboards.

Features Constituting Actionable COVID-19 Dashboards: Descriptive Assessment and Expert Appraisal of 158 Public Web-Based COVID-19 Dashboards

Background

Since the outbreak of COVID-19, the development of dashboards as dynamic, visual tools for communicating COVID-19 data has surged worldwide. Dashboards can inform decision-making and support behavior change. To do so, they must be actionable. The features that constitute an actionable dashboard in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic have not been rigorously assessed.

Objective

The aim of this study is to explore the characteristics of public web-based COVID-19 dashboards by assessing their purpose and users (“why”), content and data (“what”), and analyses and displays (“how” they communicate COVID-19 data), and ultimately to appraise the common features of highly actionable dashboards.

Methods

We conducted a descriptive assessment and scoring using nominal group technique with an international panel of experts (n=17) on a global sample of COVID-19 dashboards in July 2020. The sequence of steps included multimethod sampling of dashboards; development and piloting of an assessment tool; data extraction and an initial round of actionability scoring; a workshop based on a preliminary analysis of the results; and reconsideration of actionability scores followed by joint determination of common features of highly actionable dashboards. We used descriptive statistics and thematic analysis to explore the findings by research question.

Results

A total of 158 dashboards from 53 countries were assessed. Dashboards were predominately developed by government authorities (100/158, 63.0%) and were national (93/158, 58.9%) in scope. We found that only 20 of the 158 dashboards (12.7%) stated both their primary purpose and intended audience. Nearly all dashboards reported epidemiological indicators (155/158, 98.1%), followed by health system management indicators (85/158, 53.8%), whereas indicators on social and economic impact and behavioral insights were the least reported (7/158, 4.4% and 2/158, 1.3%, respectively). Approximately a quarter of the dashboards (39/158, 24.7%) did not report their data sources. The dashboards predominately reported time trends and disaggregated data by two geographic levels and by age and sex. The dashboards used an average of 2.2 types of displays (SD 0.86); these were mostly graphs and maps, followed by tables. To support data interpretation, color-coding was common (93/158, 89.4%), although only one-fifth of the dashboards (31/158, 19.6%) included text explaining the quality and meaning of the data. In total, 20/158 dashboards (12.7%) were appraised as highly actionable, and seven common features were identified between them. Actionable COVID-19 dashboards (1) know their audience and information needs; (2) manage the type, volume, and flow of displayed information; (3) report data sources and methods clearly; (4) link time trends to policy decisions; (5) provide data that are “close to home”; (6) break down the population into relevant subgroups; and (7) use storytelling and visual cues.

Conclusions

COVID-19 dashboards are diverse in the why, what, and how by which they communicate insights on the pandemic and support data-driven decision-making. To leverage their full potential, dashboard developers should consider adopting the seven actionability features identified.