Enticott Gareth, Mitchell Andrew, Wint William, Tait Nigel
School of Geography and Planning, Cardiff University, Cardiff, United Kingdom.
Animal and Plant Health Agency, Addlestone, United Kingdom.
Front Vet Sci. 2018 Jan 5;4:230. doi: 10.3389/fvets.2017.00230. eCollection 2017.
Disease maps are important tools in the management of disease. By communicating risk, disease maps can help raise awareness of disease and encourage farmers and veterinarians to employ best practice to eliminate the spread of disease. However, despite the importance of disease maps in communicating risk and the existence of various online disease maps, there are few studies that explicitly examine their usability. Where disease maps are complicated to use, it seems that they are unlikely to be used effectively. The paper outlines an attempt to create an open access, online, searchable map of incidents of bovine tuberculosis in England and Wales, and analyzes its usability among veterinarians. The paper describes the process of creating the map before describing the results of a series of usability trials. Results show the map to score highly on different measures of usability. However, the trials also revealed a number of social and technical limitations and challenges facing the use of online disease maps, including reputational dangers, role confusion, data accuracy, and data representation. The paper considers the challenges facing disease maps and their potential role in designing new methodologies to evaluate the effectiveness of disease prevention initiatives.
疾病地图是疾病管理中的重要工具。通过传达风险，疾病地图有助于提高对疾病的认识，并鼓励农民和兽医采用最佳做法来消除疾病传播。然而，尽管疾病地图在传达风险方面很重要，且存在各种在线疾病地图，但很少有研究明确考察其可用性。如果疾病地图使用起来很复杂，那么似乎不太可能得到有效利用。本文概述了创建英格兰和威尔士牛结核病事件的开放获取、在线且可搜索地图的尝试，并分析了其在兽医中的可用性。本文在描述一系列可用性试验结果之前，先介绍了创建地图的过程。结果显示该地图在不同的可用性指标上得分很高。然而，试验也揭示了在线疾病地图使用面临的一些社会和技术限制及挑战，包括声誉风险、角色混淆、数据准确性和数据呈现等问题。本文探讨了疾病地图面临的挑战及其在设计评估疾病预防举措有效性的新方法方面的潜在作用。
