JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Demographic surveillance platforms play a vital role in assessing the effects that disease has on a population, and the resulting impact of subsequent healthcare interventions. Population surveillance sites generate many datasets relevant to disease surveillance, however there is a risk that this data is under-utilised, misunderstood or not acted on in a timely manner due to the volume of data captured. Data visualisation offers stakeholders a means to quickly understand and interpret collected data.

Objective:

This paper describes the development and evaluation of dashboard to visualise trial to staff and researchers at a demographic surveillance site and investigate the role that visualisation could play increasing the visibility and understanding of datasets produced therein.

Methods:

This paper presents the development of a dashboard for visualising data generated within, a demographic surveillance platform at the Africa Health Research Institute (AHRI), in KwaZulu-Natal., South Africa. An evaluation study was undertaken to assess the effectiveness of the dashboards as a data dissemination tool. A mixed-methods approach combined benchmark task evaluation to assess usability with a questionnaire to study attitudes to the use of dashboards. The evaluation was recruited 20 participants drawn from scientific, operational nursing and community advisory staff working at AHRI.

Results:

The results of the questionnaire showed that the majority of respondents felt that the dashboards provided a clear understanding of the results of the trial presented and would like to see the use of dashboards within the research centre to disseminate results. The evaluation demonstrated high usability for the dashboard across the study groups with scientific and operational staff having minimal issues in completing the tasks outlined. There were notable differences in the efficiency of task completion among different groups of respondents, indicating varying familiarity with data visualisation interfaces.

Conclusions:

The paper has demonstrated the viability of data visualisation dashboards as a means of increasing the visibility and access to datasets at a population surveillance site. The usability differences between the different groups demonstrates the need for user-led design of dashboards in future, addressing varying computer and visualisation literacy’s present among user groups.