Karlsson David, Ekberg Joakim, Spreco Armin, Eriksson Henrik, Timpka Toomas
Department of Information and Computer Science, Linköping University, Sweden.
Stud Health Technol Inform. 2013;192:697-701.
Throughout the history of epidemiology, visualizations have been used as the interface between public-health professionals and epidemiological data. The aim of this study was to examine the impact of the level of abstraction when using visualizations on routine infectious disease control. We developed three interactive visualization prototypes at increasing levels of abstraction to communicate subsets of influenza outbreak surveillance information. The visualizations were assessed through workshops in an exploratory evaluation with infectious disease epidemiologists. The results show that despite the potential of processed, abstract, and information-dense representations, increased levels of abstraction decreased epidemiologists' understanding and confidence in visualizations. Highly abstract representations were deemed not applicable in routine practice without training. Infectious disease epidemiologists' work routines and decision-making need to be further studied in order to develop visualizations that meet both the quality requirements imposed by policy-makers and the contextual nature of work practice.
在流行病学的历史中，可视化一直被用作公共卫生专业人员与流行病学数据之间的接口。本研究的目的是检验在常规传染病控制中使用可视化时抽象程度的影响。我们开发了三个抽象程度不断提高的交互式可视化原型，以传达流感爆发监测信息的子集。通过与传染病流行病学家进行的探索性评估研讨会对这些可视化进行了评估。结果表明，尽管经过处理的、抽象的和信息密集的表示形式具有潜力，但抽象程度的提高降低了流行病学家对可视化的理解和信心。高度抽象的表示形式在未经培训的情况下被认为不适用于常规实践。为了开发既符合政策制定者提出的质量要求又符合工作实践背景性质的可视化，需要进一步研究传染病流行病学家的工作流程和决策过程。
