<p dir="ltr">Technological progress and the increasing role of information and big data continue to rapidly change all spheres of life, including the medical industry, which faces many new challenges. One of these challenges was the recent COVID-19 pandemic, which highlighted many problems of modern medicine and its lack of digitalization.</p> <p dir="ltr"><img src="https://chillicode.dev/uploads/1_2d2f0ed005.jpg" alt="1.jpg"></p> <p dir="ltr">Among the recent trends in healthcare development, health data visualization has attracted particular attention. There is an obvious necessity to simplify the storage and the perception of data for healthcare professionals and their patients. Using data visualization tools, such as graphs and charts, dramatically simplifies the perception and analysis of complex data, allowing us to understand patterns and compare indicators quickly.</p> <pre class="language-contactus"><code>{{ "title": "Write ChilliCode", "description": "To help you acknowledge your business needs and decide whether IT services will work for you, I’ve sorted out a list of cases.", "buttonText": "Contact us" }}</code></pre> <p dir="ltr">Medical visualization methods solve many problems, not only simplifying the visualization of statistics. Their use can help healthcare organizations and smaller private companies. Today, we will discuss data visualization in healthcare and the business pains it can remedy. </p> <h2 dir="ltr">What is healthcare data visualization?</h2> <p dir="ltr">Healthcare data visualization is the graphical representation of healthcare data to facilitate understanding medical data, diagnostic analysis, and decision-making processes. It involves using charts, graphs, maps, and other visual elements to convey complex medical data clearly and concisely. Healthcare data visualization enables healthcare professionals, administrators, and patients to interpret data more effectively, identify trends, patterns, and outliers, and derive actionable insights to improve healthcare delivery, outcomes, and patient care.</p> <p dir="ltr">Additionally, healthcare data visualization can provide real-time data visualization and an overview of key performance indicators (KPIs), such as patient health status and demographics, clinical outcomes, financial metrics, and more. Data visualization helps medical staff to identify and track changes in patient records and patient health statuses over time check their patients’ admissions, disease incidence, and healthcare costs. Healthcare providers can make informed decisions, optimize resource allocation, and enhance patient outcomes by leveraging data visualization tools. </p> <h2 dir="ltr">Ways to use data visualization in the healthcare industry</h2> <p dir="ltr">Health data visualization may take various forms, and you can choose the one that best suits your needs. Depending on your purpose, it might be a simple hybrid of features or a full application designed for your business.</p> <p dir="ltr"><img src="https://chillicode.dev/uploads/2_7a36f04db6.jpg" alt="2.jpg"></p> <h3 dir="ltr">IoT applications</h3> <p dir="ltr">IoT, or the Internet of Things, refers to the network of physical devices embedded with sensors, software, and other technologies that enable them to connect and exchange data with other devices and systems over the Internet, for example, hospital management systems. IoT devices like smart thermostats, lights, security cameras, and appliances enable healthcare professionals to remotely monitor and control the environment, ensure health monitoring, improve energy efficiency, and enhance security.</p> <p dir="ltr">Also, many personal IoT devices, such as wearable fitness trackers, remote patient monitoring systems, and smart medical devices, help healthcare providers collect real-time data, monitor patient conditions remotely, improve patient outcomes, and streamline healthcare delivery. </p> <h3 dir="ltr">Interactive dashboards</h3> <p dir="ltr">Interactive dashboards are extensively used in the healthcare industry for various purposes, such as improving patient care visualization to support decision-making, monitoring performance, and more. For example, healthcare organizations use interactive dashboards to monitor key performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics in real time, as they provide a comprehensive overview of patient flow, bed occupancy rates, emergency department wait times, staff productivity, etc. This helps medical staff identify bottlenecks, gain actionable insights, recognize trends, allocate resources efficiently, and make timely interventions to optimize workflow and patient care.</p> <p dir="ltr">Also, interactive dashboards equipped with clinical decision support tools enable medical providers to access patient records, medical data, diagnostic results, and treatment protocols in a centralized and easily accessible format. The dashboards help clinicians make data-driven decisions, track patient progress, and ensure adherence to evidence-based guidelines, leading to improved future diagnoses and treatment.</p> <h3 dir="ltr">Interactive apps and widgets</h3> <p dir="ltr">Interactive apps and widgets are increasingly used in the healthcare industry to engage patients and encourage them to manage their health and lifestyle by providing access to personal health information, treatment plans, self-assessment tools, and educational resources. Patient portals and mobile health apps supported by healthcare data visualization enable individuals to review lab results, schedule appointments, track medications, and communicate with healthcare professionals, empowering them to participate actively in decision-making, self-management, and wellness activities. </p> <p dir="ltr">Such medical technologies reduce the need for in-person visits and improve access to care, particularly for individuals in rural or underserved areas. Physical activity, sleep patterns, heart rate, and other biometric measurements added by the patients provide their supervisors with present data and up-to-date patient health status, leading to better data and predictive analysis. Manual reporting can be a feature added to a mobile application during custom software development.</p> <p dir="ltr">Medical apps and widgets can solve various business problems and simplify medical data collection and healthcare analytics.</p> <h3 dir="ltr">Motion graphics and infographics</h3> <p dir="ltr">These powerful visual communication tools can benefit public health and the healthcare sector for various purposes, including patient education, public health campaigns, professional training, data visualization, and marketing. Data visualization tools will help create engaging and easy-to-understand educational materials for the public. They can explain complex medical concepts, treatment procedures, and disease prevention strategies visually compellingly, making the information more accessible and memorable for people.</p> <p dir="ltr">Medical data visualization is valuable for raising awareness about public health issues and promoting healthy behaviors. It can illustrate the importance of vaccination, hand hygiene, smoking cessation, healthy eating, and physical activity and convey messages about illness prevention, early detection, and treatment options.</p> <p dir="ltr">Motion graphics and infographics can be used in professional training programs for healthcare providers, medical students, and allied healthcare professionals. The visual representation can demonstrate clinical skills, medical procedures, anatomy, physiology, and pharmacology, enhancing learning and information retention. Besides, such medical data visualization is a perfect solution for marketing and promotional purposes by healthcare organizations, smart device companies, pharmaceutical companies, and health-related nonprofits. They can visually showcase products, services, research findings, patient testimonials, and actionable insights to attract customers, investors, and donors.</p> <h3 dir="ltr">Maps (treemaps, density maps) and scatter plots</h3> <p dir="ltr">Maps, such as treemaps, density maps, scatter plots, and geospatial visualizations, are used to display healthcare data by geographic location, such as disease prevalence, healthcare facilities, population demographics, and resource allocation.</p> <h3 dir="ltr">Tables</h3> <p dir="ltr">Tables can be effectively used in healthcare for data organization, comparison, presentation, and more. They are commonly used in electronic health records and medical records (EHRs and EMRs) to organize and display patient historical data, such as medical history, medications, laboratory results, and treatment plans. Clinicians can quickly review and update patient information in a tabular format, facilitating comprehensive patient care and clinical decision-making.</p> <p dir="ltr">Tables are essential for organizing and presenting data analytics in healthcare studies, clinical trials, and epidemiological research. Researchers can use tables to summarize study findings, present demographic characteristics, display statistical analyses, and compare treatment groups or study cohorts.</p> <p dir="ltr">The tabular format is commonly used in healthcare financial management for data preparation and generating reports, such as budget summaries, revenue projections, expense analysis, and reimbursement data. Healthcare administrators and financial analysts can easily monitor financial performance, identify cost-saving opportunities, and optimize resource allocation.</p> <h3 dir="ltr">Flowcharts and diagrams</h3> <p dir="ltr">Patient journey maps and flowcharts illustrate the patient's healthcare journey from initial contact with the healthcare system through diagnosis, treatment, and follow-up care, helping identify opportunities for improvement and optimization.</p> <h3 dir="ltr">Charts and graphs</h3> <p dir="ltr">Various charts and graphs, such as line, bar, pie, Gantt, or bubble charts, are used to visualize trends, comparisons, distributions, and relationships within healthcare data.</p> <h2 dir="ltr">How data visualization can benefit healthcare</h2> <p dir="ltr">Data visualization can significantly benefit the medical industry in numerous ways, including enhanced data interpretation, fraud detection, and efficient resource allocation, leading to better patient outcomes and improved decision-making. It can strengthen the coordination of care and help specialists monitor their patients’ journeys. It can also provide easy access to a collection of data (especially if such big data is integrated with electronic health records, or ‘EHRs’), which may come from many different sources, and play a vital role in pattern and trend recognition. </p> <p dir="ltr">Healthcare data visualization will lower the barrier of entry for most people and help in patient education. Thanks to more educated and knowledgeable people, prevention methods and general statistics rates will be improved.</p> <h2 dir="ltr">Healthcare industry transformation: data visualization as a game changer</h2> <p dir="ltr">Data visualization in healthcare marks a qualitative push in technological progress and digitalization of the industry. There are many reasons why such high hopes are placed on data analysis and healthcare data visualization. Let’s dive into the most promising ones.</p> <h3 dir="ltr">Informing the population</h3> <p dir="ltr">Organizations use healthcare data visualization for population health management initiatives, aggregating and analyzing data from electronic health records (EHRs), health information exchanges (HIEs), and other sources to inform people. Health data visualization helps professionals identify high-risk patient populations, track diseases that occur across the observed territories and their prevalence, monitor and observe health trends within communities, and popularize a healthy lifestyle.</p> <h3 dir="ltr">Minimizing errors</h3> <p dir="ltr">Data visualization in healthcare can prevent medical errors, provided that all data points and integrations with healthcare systems are imported correctly. It will also significantly support the decision-making process since it simplifies interaction with complex data.</p> <h3 dir="ltr">Cutting operational costs</h3> <p dir="ltr">The mathematical algorithms behind healthcare data visualization tools help avoid errors in cost accounting. Thus, it will be easier to make plans to reduce purchasing costs and inventory management. </p> <h3 dir="ltr">Self-diagnosis opportunities</h3> <p dir="ltr">Unfortunately, there is a lot of misleading information on the Internet, which is why providing people with high-quality, verified data from professionals is so important. Therefore, the need for authorized self-diagnosis tools will only increase in time, and healthcare data visualization will make the user experience much more exciting and effortless.</p> <h2 dir="ltr">Examples of healthcare data visualization tools</h2> <h3 dir="ltr">Tableau</h3> <p dir="ltr">One of the leading platforms in machine learning technologies and data visualization, Tableau, is a powerful business intelligence and data visualization tool that creates interactive and shareable dashboards, reports, and visualizations from various data sources. It enables users to explore and analyze data visually, appealing, and intuitively, making it easier to uncover insights and trends. Tableau offers a user-friendly interface with drag-and-drop functionality, allowing users to quickly create visualizations without requiring extensive coding or technical expertise. Tableau is widely used across industries for data analysis, reporting, and decision-making, helping healthcare organizations like Pfizer, UNC Health, Michigan Medicine, and others turn data into actionable insights.</p> <h3 dir="ltr">Bold BI</h3> <p dir="ltr">Bold BI is an analytics and business intelligence tool designed to help businesses make data-driven decisions. It offers many features, including interactive dashboards, data visualization, reporting, and analytics capabilities. Bold BI allows users to connect to various data sources, such as databases, spreadsheets, cloud services, and web APIs, to gather and analyze data from multiple sources in one place. Bold BI also offers advanced analytics features, including predictive analytics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence capabilities, to help businesses uncover insights and trends in their data. Additionally, Bold BI provides collaboration tools that allow users to share dashboards and reports with team members, and the platform is built to seamlessly integrate with client applications and systems on both private and public clouds.</p> <h3 dir="ltr">SAS Visual Analytics</h3> <p dir="ltr">SAS Visual Analytics is a business intelligence and data visualization tool developed by SAS Institute. It allows users to explore and analyze large volumes of data quickly and easily through interactive visualizations, dashboards, and reports. One of the key features of SAS Visual Analytics is its ability to create interactive visualizations, such as bar charts, line graphs, scatter plots, and heat maps, which enable users to explore data and identify trends and patterns intuitively. These visualizations can be customized and easily shared with others to facilitate collaboration and decision-making.</p> <h3 dir="ltr">QlikView</h3> <p dir="ltr">QlikView is a business intelligence and data visualization platform that allows users to create interactive reports and dashboards to analyze and visualize data from various sources. QlikView’s critical features include data Integration (connect to multiple data sources to consolidate and integrate data for analysis), associative data model (navigate data dynamically, make selections, and see how they impact other data points in real-time), interactive visualizations (charts, graphs, tables, and maps), collaboration, and sharing (publish and distribute reports and dashboards securely). QlikView helps organizations gain actionable insights, improve decision-making, and drive business success.</p> <h3 dir="ltr">Domo</h3> <p dir="ltr">Domo is a cloud-based data analytics and business intelligence platform that offers a comprehensive suite of tools for data integration, visualization, and collaboration. </p> <p dir="ltr">Domo users can connect and integrate data from various sources, including databases, spreadsheets, cloud applications, and APIs. It offers multiple visualization options, including charts, graphs, maps, and KPI cards, which can be customized to meet specific business needs.</p> <p dir="ltr">Domo features advanced analytics capabilities, including predictive analytics, machine learning, and AI-driven insights. It enables users to collaborate on analysis and share insights with colleagues in real-time. Its mobile apps are also available on iOS and Android devices, allowing users to access and interact with their data anytime and anywhere.</p> <h2 dir="ltr">Possible challenges in data visualization for Healthcare organizations</h2> <p dir="ltr">Creating data visualization in healthcare can be challenging due to the complexity and sensitivity of the data involved. Some of the possible challenges may be the quality and accuracy of data since incomplete data or errors due to its integration from multiple sources (like EHRs, lab systems, patient surveys, etc.) can skew predictive medical visualization and mislead the decision-making process.</p> <p dir="ltr"><img src="https://chillicode.dev/uploads/3_a623edc490.jpg" alt="3.jpg"></p> <p dir="ltr">The sheer volume and variety of healthcare data, including structured and unstructured data, can be overwhelming, especially if they are demonstrated in an unfriendly way. Medical data often requires specialized knowledge to interpret correctly, which can be a barrier for general data scientists or analysts. Therefore, it is essential to ensure that proper data visualization is accessible to all users, including those with disabilities.</p> <p dir="ltr">Implementing real-time data visualization to reflect current patient statuses and operational metrics can be technically demanding. This is an important feature to consider while performing custom software development. Also, incorporating advanced analytics, such as predictive analysis, modeling, or machine learning, into data visualizations can be complex. </p> <p dir="ltr">Inaccurate mathematical models underlying graphical figures and charts are yet another potential issue that may occur and ruin data analytics. The proper quality of code is crucial so that data-driven decisions are based on real data and, therefore, adequate. Addressing these challenges requires a multidisciplinary approach involving collaboration among healthcare professionals, data scientists, and IT experts to create effective and compliant healthcare data visualization.</p> <h2 dir="ltr">How do you start and implement data visualization tools and medical software development for healthcare organizations?</h2> <p dir="ltr">Starting with data visualization tools and medical software development for the healthcare sector involves several key steps. You need to define the goals of your healthcare organization and determine the key performance indicators and metrics to be tracked. </p> <h3 dir="ltr">Hire a team</h3> <p dir="ltr">Healthcare data visualization takes work to build. It requires significant time and financial investment, and it's challenging for a single specialist to handle alone. To tackle this project, you need to hire competent professionals, and there are two main approaches: engaging freelance developers or partnering with a software development company.</p> <p dir="ltr">Freelance developers are widely available, and their typically lower rates can lead to substantial cost savings. However, working with a dispersed team of freelancers carries significant risks, including potential quality issues and missed deadlines. Additionally, turnover can be high among freelancers, and replacing those freelancers can complicate maintaining high-quality technical support for the final product.</p> <p dir="ltr">On the other hand, mobile app and website development companies, though fewer in number, offer teams with a broader skill set and up-to-date expertise in the required areas. While hiring a development company for a "turnkey" project will be more expensive than a team of freelancers, the risks of missed deadlines and financial loss are minimized. A coordinated team effort led by a project manager ensures the quality and timely delivery of the product.</p> <h3 dir="ltr">Make up the concept and test hypotheses.</h3> <p dir="ltr">Define your future product’s purpose, mission, and target audience. Identify who the software is for, the type of data visualization you need, and the problems you aim to solve for individuals or businesses. This stage involves market analysis and testing various hypotheses to determine the best fit for your goals and the highest potential. At this point, envision the app's functionalities and user interface.</p> <h3 dir="ltr">Research your competitors</h3> <p dir="ltr">Conduct thorough market research to understand existing products in healthcare data and identify gaps your product can fill. Analyze competitor apps to determine what will make yours unique and competitive.</p> <h3 dir="ltr">Define the functionality </h3> <p dir="ltr">Defining the app's functionality is crucial in healthcare sector app development. Put yourself in the user’s position to consider how you would like to interact with the app and the expected features. Then, think of the features you need to include to reach your goals: data analytics, prescriptive analysis, descriptive analytics, predictive analysis and diagnostic analysis, machine learning, manual reporting, you name it. A product manager can assist in conceptualizing the app, ensuring it addresses the target audience’s needs and performs its intended tasks effectively.</p> <h3 dir="ltr">Choose the implementation platforms</h3> <p dir="ltr">For data analytics, whether it’s complex data or a rather primitive healthcare data app for personal needs, it’s essential to launch the project on both Android and iOS platforms to maximize your reach if you plan to create a mobile application for your software. Additionally, consider developing a comprehensive website optimized for smartphone and tablet users and considering interoperability with existing electronic health records systems and other medical software.</p> <h3 dir="ltr">Develop the UX/UI Design </h3> <p dir="ltr">UX design (User Experience design) focuses on creating user-friendly and enjoyable services, products, and interfaces. This process starts early in the idea analysis stage to ensure the design aligns with your business and the target audience’s needs.</p> <p dir="ltr">UI design (User Interface design) involves the visual aspects of the mobile application or software, including functional elements that users interact with, such as buttons, menus, colors, fonts, and the positioning of elements on the screen. The primary goal of UI design is facilitating simple and intuitive user interactions with the app or website.</p> <p dir="ltr">Think of how to use interactive dashboards, charts, and widgets to support and present data. Once more, ensure that the software includes real-time data visualization and monitoring features.</p> <h3 dir="ltr">Develop an MVP </h3> <p dir="ltr">In this stage, your team creates a Minimum Viable Product, a prototype. This test version of the product with essential functionality will be your product’s foundation. </p> <p dir="ltr">The developers decide on the development tools, environment, and programming languages. The choice of programming languages at the initial development stage is crucial, as it influences the application's available functions and features. If you have plans to use machine learning, the team must create a suitable environment and Integrate natural language processing (NLP) models to analyze unstructured data, such as patient notes. A decent idea is to follow the trends and use AI-driven algorithms for predictive analysis and decision support systems.</p> <p dir="ltr">Rely on the developers' expertise to choose the appropriate languages based on the planned functionality and complexity. Once decided, the team will develop the backend and write the app's code.</p> <h3 dir="ltr">Test and validate the final product </h3> <p dir="ltr">Before releasing your mobile app on official stores or launching the website, ensure it functions correctly across various devices and operating system versions. Test engineers will thoroughly examine all app features, identifying and resolving bugs. They will oversee the developers' changes until the app reaches its final, polished version.</p> <p dir="ltr">Ensure they conduct thorough testing to ensure the accuracy of data visualizations and the reliability of the software. Validate the mathematical models and algorithms used in the healthcare data. Ensure security and regulatory compliance—such personal and vulnerable information must be stored securely, so implement robust data security measures to protect sensitive healthcare information.</p> <h3 dir="ltr">Provide ongoing support and optimization</h3> <p dir="ltr">Post-release, it’s essential to maintain communication with users, consider their feedback, and make necessary adjustments to improve user experience. Continuously update the software’s functionality (releasing frequent updates and regularly adding new content and data visualization tools to keep users engaged). Address any limitations or bugs promptly. The development team, familiar with the app’s intricacies, will provide efficient, high-quality technical support.</p> <pre class="language-subscription"><code>sub</code></pre> <p dir="ltr">Continuously monitor the performance and impact of the healthcare data visualization your software demonstrates. Soon, you will see data visualization transforming peoples’ lives, and your product will be a part of this inspiring process.</p> <h2 dir="ltr">Visualize your healthcare data with CHILLICODE</h2> <p dir="ltr">Data visualization in healthcare is not easy, and it depends on many factors, including functionality, design, complexity, and implementation platforms. If you think of healthcare app development or data visualization software creation, you can turn to CHILLICODE Studio.</p> <p dir="ltr">CHILLICODE Studio has been providing mobile application and website development services for eight years and has successfully launched more than 350 projects. Understanding all our clients' pains and needs is essential for us to create quality customized ‘turnkey’ products. <a href="https://chillicode.dev/">Leave a request on our website</a>, and we will define the goals and objectives of your data visualization solution and estimate the cost of developing a customized solution.</p>
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