Syme A1, Houghton K1, Schirmer J1
1University Of Canberra, , Australia
Biography:
Dr Anna Syme is a research officer at the Health Research Institute within the University of Canberra focusing on data visualisation and analytics. Her work is directed by health researchers to produce clear and insightful static and interactive visualisations to help communicate complex research ideas to a wide range of stakeholders.
Abstract:
Effective communication of health research outcomes is crucial to achieve impact on decision-making and policy development but is often neglected. This presentation uses the example from a regional wellbeing context to demonstrate how interactive dashboards can enable non-research stakeholders in understanding and using research data.
There is an abundance of data available from many different sources in a variety of formats that could be useful for non-research focused users. For community groups that don’t necessarily have the technically skills to source or parse this data it can be overwhelming and inaccessible to use this data in a meaningful way. A curated interactive dashboard developed with the key stakeholders in mind can curtail this issue.
Data used for this dashboard was sourced from the Regional Wellbeing Survey, run by the WellRes group at the University of Canberra and the project was funded by the Gardiner Foundation. Data for the dashboard was aggregated and tailored to three case study regions in Victoria and will be made publicly available. PowerBI was used to develop and host the dashboard.
Consultation with community groups and steering committees was used to tailor the data and functionality of the dashboard. This is an important step in the co-design process as it allows for the dashboard to be shaped by those who will use it to develop insights and drive decisions.
This case study demonstrates how co-designed, interactive dashboards can bridge the gap between health research and community decision-making by making the data easily accessible and understandable.
