Funded by the Army’s Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Center, we developed the BioSINE toolset to provide visualization and collaboration capabilities to improve the accessibility and utility of health surveillance data. Investigation of public health (PH) practitioners’ needs with cognitive engineering methods revealed two key objectives:
1. To provide analysts and decision makers with an intuitive, visually driven workspace.
2. To support a web presence to provide rapid updating and facilitate greater interaction with data analysis in the PH community.
To better serve under-resourced PH organizations, both domestic and abroad, it is necessary to minimize information technology requirements and expertise in complex analytic tools.
BioSINE provides decision makers with the ability to create customized visualizations, focus on specific aspects of the data, or conduct hypothesis testing. Users can also view or hide variables, specify data ranges, and filter data relevant to their interests. Figure 1 shows a display in which a user investigated seasonal effects by narrowing the analysis to the summer months. Intuitive filtering is a key characteristic of the application to quickly produce snapshots of local interests.
Objective
BioSINE strives to improve situational awareness by making data visualization and collaboration capabilities intuitive and readily available for a wide range of PH stakeholders.