Characteristics and specifications of dashboards developed for the COVID-19 pandemic: a scoping review

Abstract

Aim The use of information-based solutions such as dashboards is on the rise for taking fact-based actions against the COVID-19 crisis. This scoping review aimed to comprehensively investigate COVID-19 dashboards from different technical perspectives. Subject and methods Three main bibliographic databases, PubMed, Web of Science, and Scopus, were searched on 28 August 2021 to retrieve relevant studies. Arksey and O'Malley’s (Int J Soc Res Methodol 8(1):19–32, 2005) methodological framework and the enhanced version of this methodology developed by Levac et al. (Implement Sci 5(1):1–9, 2010 ) were adopted for conducting this review. Results In total, 26 articles were included. The COVID-19 dashboards mainly focused on the infected (n = 25), deceased (n = 17), and recovered cases (n = 13), as well as the performed test (n = 10). Most of the dashboards were interactive, with public accessibility targeting various user groups. While some dashboards were both informative and supportive (38%), most were mainly informative (92%). The dashboard data were generally analyzed using simple techniques (58%) and delivered through web-based applications (88%). Conclusion Dashboards can help immediately manage, analyze, and summarize a huge amount of information about a COVID-19 outbreak. The findings revealed that the developed COVID-19 dashboards share more or less analogous characteristics that could lay the groundwork for designing and developing dashboards for any other pandemic.

National Public Health Dashboards: Protocol for a Scoping Review

“…A manual quality control screening identified additional duplicate records (primarily preprint and published versions of the same work), leaving 1113 records. Following the addition of "grey literature" sources (n=10) and additional papers that were identified through our snowballing review of sources cited in other related literature reviews (n=5) [2,4,12,32], the corpus included 1128 documents. Of these, a total of 289 documents (or 25.6% of all documents screened) met the study's selection criteria and were retained for analysis.…”

“…This scoping review will provide a descriptive and thematic overview of the purpose; intended audiences; health topics; design elements and characteristics; evidence of the impact of national public health data dashboards; and the processes used for development, implementation, and evaluation. Previous reviews of the literature on this topic have focused on identifying and evaluating key design features of public health data dashboards, but most were limited to a specific health topic, such as COVID-19 [2,12], food and nutrition systems [13], infectious diseases [14], and environmental hazards [15], or were limited in focus to specific design features such as data visualization design [16] or usability and usefulness [4]. By comparison, the planned scoping review will be much broader and comprehensive in terms of the scope of health topics and applications considered, but also in terms of considering different potential goals of data dashboards (eg, alert, educate, and persuade), theories of action (or how dashboards are presumed or expected to work), and outcomes of use (including impact indicators)-and comparing these across different settings and intended audiences.…”

“…The disjointed public health response to the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the critical importance of having robust public health data systems in place and the potential utility of data dashboards for ensuring timely and unrestricted access to critical public health data. Data dashboards have been used extensively in the pandemic, collating real-time public health data, including confirmed cases, deaths, and testing figures, to keep the public informed and support policymakers in refining interventions [1,2]. The growing availability of data visualization platforms and tools, coupled with the ubiquitous use of dashboards to chronicle different aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic, increased the appeal of data dashboards to a wide and diverse range of decision makers including public health leaders and professionals, health care providers, community leaders, policymakers, and advocates [3,4].…”

Impacts of public health and social measures on COVID-19 in Europe: a review and modified Delphi technique

“…Still, after 3 years, these issues appear not to have found reflection in mid- to long-term policies, making it imperative to question the actual preparedness of health systems for future crisis events. Several stakeholders have developed interactive maps, dashboards, and catalogs summarizing PHSMs applied per country over time ( 4 , 5 ). International agencies and universities, specifically the European Center for Disease Control (ECDC) and the University of Oxford, have created interactive maps displaying the epidemiological evolution of the pandemic and the PHSMs applied by countries with the aim of informing the public.…”