Esri Health Conference, 2015

Mark Carrozza, Dirctor of HealthLandscape, recently blogged about the idea that "Place Matters," especially when it comes to health and health care. It was fitting, then, that HealthLandscape had two presentations on the agenda at this year's Esri Health Conference, which was themed "Making Place Matter."

Our first presentation was an overview of two HealthLandscape tools - The Medicare Data Portal and Accountable Care Organization (ACO) Explorer. The aim of these tools is to help put the power of geographic visualization in the hands of researchers and policy makers. 

The Medicare Data Portal engages decision-makers and researchers with county and Hospital Referral Region (HRR) data from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid (CMS) Geographic Variation database and the Chronic Conditions Warehouse. Users are able to visualize health outcome, cost, and demographic data for the Medicare population using maps, graphs, and trend charts. Users also have the ability to examine the relationship between two indicators (for example, Inpatient Costs and Diabetes) with side-by-side maps and a comparison tool that uses percentiles to visualize the relationship between variables. Users can choose from over 100 indicators across 6 categories, including Medicare Population data, Chronic Conditions, Utilization, Costs, Multiple Chronic Conditions, and Dartmouth Measures.

The ACO Explorer presents data for 211 Accountable Care Organizations, or ACOs. As part of the Affordable Care Act, new models of health care delivery have been developed, aimed at improving the quality of care while reducing costs. ACOs are being touted as potential solutions for the inefficiency and fragmentation of the U.S. healthcare system.  ACOs are made up of groups of doctors, hospitals, and other health care providers that coordinate care for Medicare beneficiaries. The tool allows users to visualize 33 quality metrics across five domains, which are compared against benchmarks set by CMS. Each point represents an accountable care organization. When you hover over or click on a specific site, flared rollover windows will appear that contain data about the quality measures included in each of the five domains, which will be colored red, yellow, or green based on their value respective to the thresholds. 

This set of tools can be accessed at www.healthlandscape.org/ACOExplorer/map.cfm. For more detailed information, check out our previous blog post, or sign up for an upcoming webinar.

In addition to the more traditional paper sessions, the conference plenary session featured a round of Lightning Talks, where each presenter had a strict 5 minute window in which to present their ideas. Mark presented the HealthLandscape GeoEnrichment API, a HIPAA-compliant Data as a Service (DaaS) solution that appends multiple geographic identifiers and small-area community characteristics to individual data. This project involves integrating social determinants of health data into patient level data to yield a broader view of the environmental and social risks specific to each patient by indicating whether patient lives in the presence of factors such as poverty, healthy food sources, walkable streets and parks, social capital, and much more.  

We're very excited about all of the possible applications of this simple, but powerful, tool, and we look forward to sharing our ideas and plans in future blog posts.

Jené Grandmont
Senior Manager, Application Development and Data Services
HealthLandscape

GIS Data Visualization: Indispensable for Policymakers and Community Leaders

The Data! Fostering Health Innovation in Kentucky and Ohio conference
proved to be a showcase for GIS technology in practice.

Geospatial data visualization is an indispensable tool for policymakers and community leaders, as evidenced by yesterday's Data! Fostering Health Innovation in Kentucky and Ohio conference. Although the conference was not intended to be a showcase for geospatial information system (GIS) technology, almost every presenter used geospatial data visualization and analysis to tell their story. In many cases, it was the story.

Here are three highlights from the day.

GE Aviation Uses GIS Data Visualization to Improve Employee Health

GE Aviation is using a customized version of HealthLandscape's Site Performance Explorer to bring common sense and creativity to its efforts to improve employee health. For example, GE used to spread a "Stop Smoking" message only among its workers. Now the company uses GIS data visualization to see the prevalence of smoking in the communities that surround its sites. When a visualization shows high smoking rates, GE extends its nonsmoking promotions throughout the community because the company recognizes that employees are more likely to stop smoking if their friends and family members don't smoke. GE uses their customized app to address other health issues as well, such as improving employee access to primary care providers and promoting health screenings.

Why GIS? Because GIS data visualization draws attention to factors within a community that can directly affect an organization.

The City of Louisville Tackles Asthma Using GIS Data Visualization

Ted Smith, Chief of Economic Growth and Innovation for the city of Louisville, Kentucky, is using GIS data visualization not only to improve residents' health, but also to increase the region's economic vitality.

Statistics show that Louisville has extremely poor air quality--among the worst in the nation--making it a challenging place for people with asthma to live. High asthma-related emergency room admission rates and poor air quality scores make it difficult to attract and retain businesses. Smith has initiated a program with Propeller Health to supply Louisville-area residents with GIS-equipped inhalers. Each time a patient uses their inhaler, sensors record when and where the puff was taken. Analysts then combine inhaler data with weather, air pollution, traffic pattern, and other large data sets to look for ways to intervene, on both the patient and the policy level.

There have already been some surprising findings. For example, residents generally avoid living on the city's west side, where large industrial complexes are located and pollution levels are perceived to be high. Data have shown, however, that particulate matter levels are much higher in Louisville's wealthiest neighborhoods, likely due to weather patterns and the city's topographical characteristics. GIS data visualization shows just how pronounced the difference is.

Why GIS? Because GIS data visualization can show truths that run counter to our intuition.

Ohio-Kentucky-Indiana Regional Councils of Government Uses Crowdsourcing to Map Bike Routes 

Ohio-Kentucky-Indiana Regional Councils of Government (OKI) wanted to create bike route maps for Northern Kentucky and Ohio. They tried traditional outreach methods (e.g., email, meetings) to engage the cycling community. Their most successful effort was a survey conducted at local bike shops. They received a total of 34 responses.

OKI decided to try a new approach: crowdsourcing. They created a simple online mapping platform and invited the cycling community to add bike routes to the online map. They also invited riders to share their experiences with those routes. The resulting Bike Route Guide is now a permanent part of OKI's website (click here for the link).

Why GIS? Because GIS data visualization can invite participation and community engagement in a way that traditional methods do not.

At HealthLandscape, we strive to create GIS data visualization tools that don't require GIS specialists to use them. We want you to be able to make your data accessible, "mash it up" with other data sets, and use the visualizations to ask questions and formulate solutions to your community's challenges.

To learn more about our GIS data visualizations, attend one of our free webinars.

Introduction to HealthLandscape

In-depth instruction on using HealthLandscape, our free online mapping tool and data library
Thursday, December 5, 2:00 pm ET

The Community Data Portal

In-depth demonstration of our award-winning data dissemination tool
Tuesday, December 10, 2:00 pm EST

Visualizing Data with HealthLandscape

Overview of all of our data visualization tools, including the Site Performance Explorer
Tuesday, December 17, 2:00 pm ET

Three Reasons Interactive GIS Data Visualizations Get Your Message Across Faster

Last week, we were among the featured innovators at an event that brought together emerging life science companies, prospective investors, policymakers, and other people who want to significantly improve health in the Greater Cincinnati region.

We set up in a beautifully appointed conference room and began rolling a video that highlighted several of the HealthLandscape tools on a giant LED monitor. Our presentation commanded the audience's attention.

Why? What was so compelling about these interactive maps?

We noticed that almost every person who stepped into the room engaged with what they were seeing in the same three ways:

They immediately had a frame of reference.

What did they look for first? Their neighborhood. Their community. Their landmarks. They quickly found where they belonged, and shifted their focus to the data we were presenting. We didn't have to spend time setting up the context. They already had it.

They immediately began looking for patterns.

People began asking questions and making observations: Why are so many clustered in that area? What does that shading represent? That's not what I would have expected there. I'm surprised that number isn't higher. People quickly began trying to make sense of the complex data. Seeing the data geographically energized and engaged them.

They immediately wanted to take the data further.

Once the initial observations were made, the audience wanted to dig deeper. They wanted to find meaning in the data. They wanted to not just observe a pattern but also understand why the pattern might be occurring. Is there a high level of unemployment in that area? What about poverty? Does that cluster of people with severe heart disease have access to a hospital? Because of HealthLandscape's interactive design and full library of community data, their questions could be addressed as their mental wheels were turning, while they were beginning to imagine ways to meet the identified need.

Our minds process visual information more quickly than textual information. One writer demonstrates this by placing a drawing of a circle next to a paragraph of text that gives a definition of a circle. Which do you have to work harder to understand: the image or the definition? And which will you remember?

Which do you understand more quickly--the map or the table? Both show the same data.

While any visualization has the potential to be "sticky," GIS visualizations go one step further because viewers have the potential to make a personal connection with the data. Your audience, whether it is a community of care providers, policymakers, funders, or the very people you serve, look for where they are in relation to the data, and ask, "How does this affect me?"

To learn more about HealthLandscape's interactive GIS data visualizations, attend one of our regularly scheduled webinars:

The Community Data Portal

In-depth demonstrations of our award-winning data dissemination tool
Thursday, October 3, 2:00 pm ET

Introduction to HealthLandscape

In-depth instruction on using HealthLandscape, our free online mapping tool and data library
Tuesday, October 8, 2:00 pm ET

Visualizing Data with HealthLandscape

Overview of all of our data visualization tools, including the Site Performance Explorer
Tuesday, October 22, 2:00 pm ET

 

Data Visualization: Luxury or Necessity for Managing Population Health?

This is National Health IT Week. We're participating in the National Health IT Week Blog Carnival, offering our perspective on "The Value of Health IT" to improve healthcare delivery. Click here to see other National Health IT Week blog posts. Read contributions from Cincinnati-based health IT companies at Innov8 for Health.

Health IT is transforming healthcare delivery. Electronic medical records are in use in almost every hospital system and physician practice. Apps that help patients track glucose levels, medications, sleep cycles, and more are being introduced and improved daily. These are terrific innovations at the patient level. But how is Health IT being applied to population health?

One answer: data visualization.

Visualization tools--no matter the industry--make it easier to see relationships and identify patterns among data sets. In the field of population heath, where the twin goals of managing cost and providing quality healthcare often seem to be at odds, data visualization tools offer users a way of aggregating, displaying, and making sense of information, especially information that comes from disparate sources.

At one time, we used visuals to make our point, tell our story, and--let's be honest--keep our audience engaged and awake during presentations. We thought that was enough, and that anything "beyond the basics" was overkill--a waste of both time and money.

We can no longer afford to be so complacent. Today's visualization tools have evolved from pretty picture generators to genuine decision-making tools. Most data visualization tools can give you:

• Real-time data analysis
• Trend analysis
• Dashboards that alert you to values that fall outside of established benchmarks
• The ability to visualize multiple data sets from multiple sources
• Interactivity
• Access to data for non-data specialists

HealthLandscape specializes in online mapping tools, which give users the ability to see geographic variations among the populations they serve. This is especially critical in today's health care environment, where providers are increasingly held responsible not only for the health of their patients, but also for the health of their communities.

Health promotion efforts focus on reaching populations at-risk for chronic conditions such as diabetes, respiratory diseases, and heart conditions before these conditions manifest. Health management plans now incorporate community-based care as a way of decreasing costs and improving clinical outcomes.

Bottom line: It's impossible to manage the health of a community without knowing that community.

To learn more about HealthLandscape's data visualizations, attend one of our regularly scheduled webinars:

The Community Data Portal

In-depth demonstrations of our award-winning data dissemination tool
Thursday, September 19, 3:00 pm ET

Visualizing Data with HealthLandscape

Overview of all of our data visualization tools, including the Site Performance Explorer
Tuesday, September 24, 2:00 pm ET

 

Introduction to HealthLandscape

In-depth instruction on using HealthLandscape, our free online mapping tool and data library
Thursday, September 26, 2:00 pm

Use Case: HealthLandscape and Healthcare Policy Decisions

HealthLandscape is not just the public-access tool you use when you visit www.HealthLandscape.org. HealthLandscape is also a platform on which use-case-specific data visualization tools are built.

In the video below, Bob Phillips and Andrew Bazemore, both of the Robert Graham Center of the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) discuss how data visualizations have improved primary care delivery. Andrew (beginning at the 21:30 mark) describes the evolution of HealthLandscape and demonstrates how two tools that AAFP commissioned, UDS Mapper and Med School Mapper, have been used to help legislators make informed, data-driven policy decisions.



Their presentation, made in April 2012, was sponsored by the Australian Primary Health Care Research Institute at the Australian National University. APHCRI is developing HealthLandscape Australia, a platform that will visualize Australian healthcare workforce data, as well as other data sets.

HealthLandscape is a joint project of the Robert Graham Center and The Health Foundation of Greater Cincinnati.

We're Previewing Our Community Indicators Data Portal at United Way Community Leaders Conference

HealthLandscape specializes in creating data portals that make community data accessible, updatable, and interactive. (Check out our website for a few featured portals.)

The West Virginia Data Portal displays community indicators related to population, children and youth, educational attainment, health, and economy. The map above shows two indicators: per capita market income for 2009 (left) and 2012 Health Factors Rank (right).

We'll be previewing our Community Indicators Data Portal next week at the United Way Community Leaders Conference in Nashville.

Organizations like the United Way amass a lot of data, especially community indicator data. A community indicator is a way of measuring the health and well-being of a community. There are no standard indicators; typically, community organizations come together and work cooperatively to determine what needs to be measured and how they can do so.

Indicators can vary widely. They may include such measures as:

• Requests for assistance with basic needs such as rent or utility payments
• Food bank or food stamp usage statistics
• Unemployment statistics
• Home foreclosures
• Infant mortality
• Childhood overweight and obesity
• Chronic diseases

HealthLandscape takes community indicator data (which is usually presented in table or graph form), and deploys it on our HealthLandscape mapping platform. The data comes alive, because:

• It's given context: People understand the data in relationship to where they live
• It's not static: Indicators can be overlaid and compared
• It's visualized: What is difficult to see in a table becomes obvious on a map

How does your community measure its health and well-being? And how would a map make it easier to see?

Using Pinterest and HealthLandscape as a Way to Share Your Community Data

Have a Pinterest account? HealthLandscape does too. We just set ours up a week or so ago, so we can begin to showcase some of our tools and current projects. (Look for it to build out over time.)

Pinterest has taken hold because it harnesses the power of visual communication. Any image can be pinned—a photo, ad, infographic, data visualization, or video—and it will grab your viewer's attention quicker than words alone would.

So have you thought about using Pinterest as a way to share your mapped data? Your map + Pinterest could equal more traffic to your web site and more of your data getting out into the community!

Simply follow these steps:

• Develop your map in HealthLandscape using our QuickGeocodes, QuickThemes, or Community HealthView tool.
• Save the file.
• Upload the finished file to your organization's Pinterest site. 
• Be sure to add a description of the map and some creative copy that links to your organization's web site.
• Anticipate referral traffic!

We created a QuickMap of population change data in the Detroit area and posted it on our Pinterest site as an example. Follow us there and see how Pinterest + HealthLandscape can work for you!

Infographic or Data Visualization?

What's the difference between an infographic and a data visualization? Robert Kosara, Associate Professor of Computer Science at UNC Charlotte, explains it well on his blog. He says, "The visualization is created by a tool that can be applied to many datasets, the infographic is hand-crafted for a particular dataset."

HealthLandscape creates data visualizations

With HealthLandscape, you can:

• Use the tools again and again for multiple data sets.
• Update your custom map at any time with more current data.
• Interact with your data to better understand it.
• View your data at multiple levels: state, county, census tract, or census block group.
• Add our data layers to your data.

And you can do all of this without being a designer or a GIS professional!

We'd like to help you visualize your data. Contact us at info@healthlandscape.org.

Sidenote: Be sure to read the comments on Robert's post. His ZIPScribble maps are pretty cool too.