Visualization and analytics tools for infectious disease epidemiology: a systematic review.

BACKGROUND: A myriad of new tools and algorithms have been developed to help public health professionals analyze and visualize the complex data used in infectious disease control. To better understand approaches to meet these users' information needs, we conducted a systematic literature review focused on the landscape of infectious disease visualization tools for public health professionals, with a special emphasis on geographic information systems (GIS), molecular epidemiology, and social network analysis. The objectives of this review are to: (1) identify public health user needs and preferences for infectious disease information visualization tools; (2) identify existing infectious disease information visualization tools and characterize their architecture and features; (3) identify commonalities among approaches applied to different data types; and (4) describe tool usability evaluation efforts and barriers to the adoption of such tools. METHODS: We identified articles published in English from January 1, 1980 to June 30, 2013 from five bibliographic databases. Articles with a primary focus on infectious disease visualization tools, needs of public health users, or usability of information visualizations were included in the review. RESULTS: A total of 88 articles met our inclusion criteria. Users were found to have diverse needs, preferences and uses for infectious disease visualization tools, and the existing tools are correspondingly diverse. The architecture of the tools was inconsistently described, and few tools in the review discussed the incorporation of usability studies or plans for dissemination. Many studies identified concerns regarding data sharing, confidentiality and quality. Existing tools offer a range of features and functions that allow users to explore, analyze, and visualize their data, but the tools are often for siloed applications. Commonly cited barriers to widespread adoption included lack of organizational support, access issues, and misconceptions about tool use. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION: As the volume and complexity of infectious disease data increases, public health professionals must synthesize highly disparate data to facilitate communication with the public and inform decisions regarding measures to protect the public's health. Our review identified several themes: consideration of users' needs, preferences, and computer literacy; integration of tools into routine workflow; complications associated with understanding and use of visualizations; and the role of user trust and organizational support in the adoption of these tools. Interoperability also emerged as a prominent theme, highlighting challenges associated with the increasingly collaborative and interdisciplinary nature of infectious disease control and prevention. Future work should address methods for representing uncertainty and missing data to avoid misleading users as well as strategies to minimize cognitive overload.

Games for Health: Past, Present, and Future?

This article provides a review of selected past and present games for health. This will highlight some existing games for health and examine the relationship between health content and game technology. Because of this relationship, new technology trends may suggest future approaches to the application of videogame-based health interventions.

Experience sharing on the implementation of telehealth system in Hong Kong.

With the growth of the ageing population in Hong Kong, healthcare professionals believe that there will be a great demand of healthcare service at the community level. In 2000, the first prototype of telehealth system was developed, tested and validated by the School of Nursing, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. With the advancement of information technology and inexpensive video- conference facility, an inter-clinic patient-centered healthcare information system has been evolved and used by a number of satellite clinics since 2003. In order to foster the importance of personal healthcare education at the community level, different versions of the telehealth system were designed and developed for school children and teenagers. Now the research team is focusing on the development of the pocket PC's version. Experience on the deployment of such technology-intensive system in healthcare was discussed in this paper.

Differences among cell-structure ontologies: FMA, GO, & CCO.

When different groups create models or ontologies of the same knowledge domain, this creates challenges for knowledge sharing. To identify these challenges, we compare cellular structure as modeled by the Foundational Model of Anatomy(FMA), the Gene Ontology (GO), and the Cell Component Ontology (CCO). These ontologies all model the physical anatomy of a cell, and we expected them to be similar in scope. However, we discovered that the actual differences among the mare substantial. These differences represent variations based on theory-driven vs. emergent construction,as well as differences in how small application ontologies like the CCO are created from reference ontologies. In this paper, we provide a description and analysis of these differences. By studying differences in language, granularity, breadth of coverage,and model organization, we hope to gain a better understanding of how to map between related ontologies.