Data Visualization in Healthcare: Benefits and Tools

“Visualization gives you answers to questions you didn’t know you had.” 

– Ben Schneiderman

 

What if the right individuals in your business have the knowledge required to identify the reasons for those needlessly lengthy wait times and reduce patient wait times as a result? 

 

What if the patient care team could determine the main reasons why particular patient demographics have high readmission rates? What if the supply chain specialists were able to quickly assess spending, plan purchases, and maximize spending across the healthcare system to save overall costs? 

 

With the aid of healthcare data visualization, this is all achievable. Healthcare providers are given the ability to use powerful data analytics to swiftly examine and comprehend the data, which enhances decision quality while speeding up decision-making.

 

You will learn more about Data Visualization in Healthcare in this blog.

 

 

What is meant by Data Visualization in HealthCare?

 

A frequently used technique in the present big data era is data visualization, which is the act of analyzing massive amounts of data and communicating the results in a visual context. 

 

Big businesses like Amazon and Apple rely on data and data visualization to streamline and support their business choices as well as to maximize their operational efforts. Hospitals are currently attempting to use data visualization to increase efficiency and highlight health-related discoveries.

 

A hospital may monitor patient progress and health while also understanding operating expenses, effectiveness, and customer happiness through the use of data visualization. Data visualization has a plethora of advantages, including these.

 

A business analyst's job is to efficiently implement techniques for health care data visualization in an organization. In order to find and report on key performance indicators (KPIs), successful analysts must have excellent communication skills, be diligent researchers, and be highly driven by data.

 

The adoption of data visualization in healthcare needs to be sped up because many hospitals are only now starting to make use of vast amounts of important data.

 

Also Read | Applications of Data Visualization

 

Preventive & Predictive Medical Visualization

 

Although the future cannot be anticipated, several branches of data analytics in medical technology are available in the healthcare industry in order to convey various analyses that aid specialists in working with previous and future diagnoses. This is the case with descriptive analytics, which examines how historical data has performed as well as how it has behaved and how it is relevant to the topic, such as in diagnosing, in the past.

 

Predictive analysis seeks to forecast and foresee future diagnoses and diseases and so serves as a form of prevention, in contrast to diagnostic analysis, which seeks to understand why particular diseases occur and explain their underlying causes. Before a health practitioner makes a final decision, the prescriptive analysis seeks to evaluate several situations and predict the results.

 

The significance of data-related topics, such as data visualization, extends beyond health monitoring to assist medical professionals in anticipating potential future diseases and in explaining the causes of hazardous disorders and previous illnesses.

 

Also Read | Types of Data Visualization

 

 

Benefits of Data Visualization in Healthcare

 

The benefits of data visualization in healthcare are given below.

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Benefits of Data Visualization in Healthcare

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1. Care Coordination

 

All of these advancements in patient care come with improved data availability. Prior to the use of data visualization tools, healthcare professionals would find it difficult to gather all the data they require, examine it succinctly, let alone in a format where the data is visually easier to understand and where they can easily add new data sets for further in-depth research.

 

Through data visualization, nurses can more easily analyze studies and make use of their knowledge by making patient care data simpler. In order to determine typical healing times, health care practitioners can examine the data of other patients who have experienced the same symptoms.

 

2. Patient Education

 

Businesses like Cigna utilize data visualization to show how a person's health status compares to that of people in a similar demographic. These examples might help patients learn about their shortcomings, such as their body mass index, workout routines, and cholesterol levels.

 

3. Public Health

 

In the era of big data, many interactive visualization approaches can be used to evaluate the impact on public health and the implementation requirements in various ways. Big data can help identify implementation disparities and gaps when it is visualized effectively. 

 

This can speed up the implementation of intervention strategies to the population groups that need them the most. The success of precision public health depends on improvements in predictive analytics and useful tools for data integration and visualization.

 

Strong training and career development for big data in public health are urgently needed, as health administrators may come from a variety of specializations and the majority, even those from public health, will not be well trained in big data science.

 

The media frequently employs data visualizations to portray global trends in health. An illustration may be the confirmed COVID-19 cases by state in the United States. 

 

A graph of the United States with shading to reflect which states have been most severely impacted by the pandemic might be displayed in the visualization.

 

4. Operations

 

By identifying and assessing certain teams and individuals and comparing their performance to the corresponding KPIs, operational data can assist promote organizational transparency. 

 

Teams can benefit from sharing best practices and learning from one another in this way, which can also aid the organization's operational plan.

 

Tools of Data Visualization in Healthcare

 

A data visualization tool makes it simple to manage and gain access to patient and organizational records, which can save any healthcare company a significant amount of money. Below we’ve listed some of the Data visualization tools used in the healthcare industry

 

1. SAS Visual Analytics

 

Multiple users can access a large volume of updated data from the data loaded in memory, i.e., LASR analytic server, concurrently using SAS Analytics, a web-based application.

 

By moving the burden from one computing device to another, these servers carry out parallel networking, enabling users to swiftly access encrypted data. In order to better serve its patients and customers, Bioaxis Healthcare, a major healthcare provider in Greece, uses SAS.

 

2. Tableau

 

It is a business intelligence visualization tool that transforms unstructured data into a predetermined format to deliver structured data in real time. It enables users to instantly produce fresh knowledge by updating the data.

 

Inova Healthcare, a reputable NPO situated in Virginia, uses Tableau to quickly identify genetic illnesses and assist in giving prompt treatment to the individuals in question.

 

3. QlikView

 

Data that is directly or indirectly related to each other can be transmitted into electronic medical records with the use of the business intelligence visualization tool Qlik.

 

It assists in integrating data from many sources through its in-memory analysis, and it also lowers the cost of providing services to patients while minimizing the danger of medical error by monitoring safety measures.

 

Additionally, QlikView synchronizes the scheduling procedure by compiling a comprehensive list of all the patients and doctors on its scheduler server and exchanging information with each end of the user application.

 

Additionally, it makes sure that all regulatory compliance is timely provided and maintained, including operational and patient safety indicators.

 

Also Read | Top Data Visualization Techniques

 

 

How Is Data Visualization Transforming The Healthcare Industry?

 

The foundation of many medical investigations is effective and insightful data visualization. As they use and interact with health interfaces on a daily basis to produce patient reports and related information, it is also crucial for many doctors, medical professionals, nurses, and others.

 

Data visualization focuses on the most important takeaways for the health sector, assisting us in identifying the most recent trends and relationships, and speeding up the data analysis process. 

 

The healthcare sector is investigating various digital strategies to develop a predictive model of activity in order to express a thorough database and to promote linkages with the most recent developments.

 

Nearly all medical facilities across the world have used data visualization tools to handle their everyday internal operations. Hospitals have begun to totally rely on data visualization for all of these functions, as well as many more, from patient profiling and information recording to maintaining and monitoring satisfaction surveys and complaint registers. The following is a summary of some of the reasons why visualization techniques must be used in the healthcare industry : 

 

1. Minimizes Errors

 

By removing human error and establishing a barrier for patient safety in a risky, dynamic setting, visualization technologies frequently assist in preventing diagnostic mistakes. This becomes crucial for protecting private patient data and information.

 

A dashboard is made available by the procedure for tracking and keeping track of patient health data. E-health and e-medical records serve as the visual representation of this dashboard.

 

Time and possibly lives can be saved by dashboards that make it simple for medical personnel to analyze large amounts of data. It is a computer-based method for recording medical operations that facilitates a better understanding of ongoing procedures and systems.

 

2. Brings Down The Operational Cost

 

Making the data clearly accessible for utilization is done through data visualization. Through on-demand delivery of comprehensive data and information in easily digestible formats to the doctors, nurses, and administration, this procedure aids us in reducing operating costs.

 

The platforms give medical practitioners access to specialized knowledge and data about the characteristics and inclinations of their patients. They can now track the patients more effectively and treat them correctly thanks to this.

 

3. Interactive Widgets

 

When you have a tonne of information to give, it's impossible to pick just a few crucial aspects to highlight. This is true even if you analyze state-by-state health data using a variety of markers. 

 

Nevertheless, some knowledge components may be more significant than others to different members of your audience. If your data set fits this description, an interactive widget or dashboard might be the ideal fit for your content.

 

Through interaction, the viewer may simply get the information they are looking for without having to sift through a tonne of content they are uninterested in. This can save a lot of time and work.

 

4. Enables Self Service Analytics

 

Because they trust the data, a corporation can engage in self-service data analytics and data visualization in a secure, IT-managed environment. Similar to this, IT and the company's leadership will have confidence in the data governance model's guarantee that the appropriate individuals will have access to the data.

 

This serves as the foundation of a self-service data analytics and visualization culture. Their location and identity have an impact on what they view. Anyone with access to the data can explore and learn more by offering self-service analytics.

 

Asking questions that result in deeper insights, sharing observations, learning from one another, and answering one's own questions are all made simple. Each doctor would only be allowed to view and study the data that is available to them according to the security model because it is on a network that is centrally managed and monitored by IT.

 

5. Assisting High-Risk Patients

 

The identification and grouping of patients according to the care and attention they need can also be aided by data visualization. It would be excellent to have access to and search for data that can be utilized to identify the patterns of many patients if all medical records were kept digitally.

 

The persistent issues of patients who frequently visit the hospital will be recognised. The patients would receive more accurate care thanks to this awareness and analysis, which would also give insight into how to reduce the number of times they need to be seen.

 

The best way to make and keep track of a list of high-risk patients, check in on them, and ensure they receive the individualized care they require.

 

Also Read | Data Visualization in Marketing

 

The demand for visualization tools is growing along with the trend of industry toward a more data-focused environment. In the healthcare sector, data visualization's function will probably grow rapidly.

 

It will offer a comprehensive perspective of market activity, from patient profiling to hospital operation monitoring, and will therefore enable it to offer more individualized experiences to both clients and patients.