Modernizing Health IT

Responsible Visualizations of COVID-19 Data

Teams are making ready-to-use COVID-19 datasets easily accessible for the wider data visualization and analysis community. Johns Hopkins posts frequently updated data on their github page, and Tableau has created a COVID-19 Resource Hub with the same data reshaped for use in Tableau. These public assets are immensely helpful for public health professionals and authorities responding to the epidemic. At the same time the stakes are high around how we communicate about this epidemic to the wider public. Excella's Senior Data Visualization Lead Amanda Makulec talks about visualizing data responsibly in this article on Medium.

Be Informed, Not Terrified of COVID-19 Charts

We are in the middle of an information overload about the novel coronavirus, with hourly case updates and endless streams of information. How do you find the signal in the noise? What information do you need to make decisions in the face of this pandemic? Having spent more than a decade working on data visualization in public health, Amanda Makulec has personally seen how visualizations can be powerful tools for communicating information, but can also mislead, misinform, and—in the worst cases—incite panic. Check out Excella's Senior Data Visualization Lead Amanda Makulec's complete guide to reading COVID-19 charts.

Collecting data for the CDC’s community Scorecard, a tool is used for assessment, planning, and monitoring of health services in multiple countries, has been hectic. The process was manual, creating challenges with collecting, visualizing, and reporting the data. Completing a scorecard could take up to three months to have all the data put together, analyzed, and reported, making the information less timely than preferred. Working together, Excella and the CDC aimed to visualize data from local Community Scorecards in the form of a user-friendly dashboard to see how various advocacy items and actions taken could impact community outcomes. Watch this video to see how Excella and the CDC went about creating, testing, and iterating on this dashboard in Uganda to deliver the information more quickly and add additional visibility into the advocacy impact of their work.

Modernizing for the Future of Health IT

Modernization is no small feat. Upgrading legacy systems are often high-visibility projects with high failure rates. In our experience, using Lean and Agile methodologies to implement change gradually offers the highest rate of success to improve customer service, accelerate response time, and strengthen security. This is especially true in healthcare where there is a complex ecosystem of providers, patients, systems, and data. Excella's modernization approach focuses on outcomes such as:

HHS OIG Enterprise Dashboard

Excella collaborated with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General (HHS OIG) to create a hybrid cloud infrastructure to support the Enterprise Dashboard. The Enterprise Dashboard, created through this project, gives an integrated and standardized view of critical data and allows HHS operatives the ability to drill into details so they can give faster and more comprehensive responses to information requests from Congress.

Jimmy Benani

Federal Industry Practice Lead

Jimmy Benani leads Excella’s Federal Health Practice. He has led teams in business analysis, process re-engineering, program & project management, software development, and agile methodologies for the past 15 years. Jimmy is now responsible for delivering value at agencies within the Department of Commerce, Department of Health and Human Services, and Department of Justice. He was recently elected as the Industry Vice-Chair of the American Council for Technology - Industry Advisory Council (ACT-IAC)'s new Health COI and is Excella's federal health IT expert.

FEDERAL HEALTH

Improving Public Health through the Power of IT

The future of health IT has the potential to:

Harnessing Data to Improve Public Health

Public Health Data Use-Cases

Responsible Visualizations of COVID-19 Data

Be Informed, Not Terrified of COVID-19 Charts

Community Advocacy through Data Visualization

Modernizing for the Future of Health IT

Public Health Modernization Use-Cases

HHS OIG Enterprise Dashboard

Fed Health Experts

Jimmy Benani

Federal Industry Practice Lead

Modernize Your Approach with Industry Experts