Gyeonggi Infectious Disease Control Center (GIDCC) fights disease more efficiently with Tableau
89% reduction in reporting time per week
Mapped infectious diseases for public awareness
Promoted collaboration and research innovation
Gyeonggi Infectious Disease Control Center (GIDCC) is a Korean non-profit research institute that helps prevent and manage infectious diseases at the regional scale.
GIDCC adopted Tableau to inform the public with more vivid, intuitive information on disease. Today, its staff and researchers explore and analyze data on 20-30 infectious diseases on a daily basis. With Tableau Server, they can share analyses with the provincial government and public health centers, increasing collaboration and accessibility across organizations. Tableau Public expanded the reach of information on infectious diseases, providing the ability to share findings with the public in an easy-to-consume format. With less time spent crunching numbers, GIDCC can more effectively manage infectious diseases.
We reduced weekly reporting time by 89% with simplified analysis processes. And we can now provide the public with more understandable information on infectious diseases.
89% reduction in reporting time per week
GIDCC delivers information on infectious diseases to relevant parties such as the provincial government and public health centers, sharing and applying feedback in real time. The organization operates a localized infection management system, conducting research to improve prevention and response systems and to increase the public’s health literacy.
GIDCC wanted to make information on infectious diseases three dimensional and intuitive to enhance citizens’ understanding. However without a BI system for infectious diseases, GIDCC researchers had difficulties in quickly utilizing diverse data sources. Analyzing new data and taking new directions required long, complex, and repetitive processes. The organization needed an economical way to analyze data in support of public infectious disease prevention efforts.
With Tableau and the expertise of a Tableau partner in Korea, PLANIT, GIDCC researchers significantly reduced analysis time from two to three hours per week to just 20 minutes—an 89% reduction. They also reduced daily exploratory analyses to just below one hour—giving researchers more time to make scientific progress instead of churning out reports. GIDCC is planning to develop this daily analysis work to daily bulletin service.
Mapping infectious diseases for public awareness
In 2015, GIDCC launched an “online system to inform the public about infectious diseases.” In the process, they realized they could perform complicated statistical analyses and plot diseases on maps, including Seoul and Korea as a whole using Tableau—which were big factors in the organization’s analytical processes.
While it had to respond to the Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) crisis, GIDCC team members discovered Tableau. With Tableau, GIDCC could map all administrative districts of South Korea and even connect to R.
To better utilize Tableau, GIDCC started to post dashboards that showed occurrences of infectious diseases on maps of cities and districts in Gyeonggi-do, setting automatic data refreshes. GIDCC opened up these dashboards to Gyeonggi-do’s public every week.
Based on their success with Tableau Desktop, GIDCC took its earnest move forward the project using Tableau in September 2016. They utilized the expertise of PLANIT, Tableau’s Korean partner, to understand the importance of building various links with outside systems and utilizing these systems to build a data warehouse to store health data and a portal service for professional users. Training, guidance and consulting services was provided by PLANIT to help GIDCC researchers and public health care servants to accomplish the project.
Because infectious diseases spread rapidly through the environment or people, it’s imperative that local situations are quickly analyzed and informed to the public. Tableau’s exploratory analysis allows public health experts to predict diseases and support public prevention efforts.
Influencing action with data during avian flu outbreak
Previously, researchers used Microsoft Excel and Google spreadsheets to provide information on the outbreak and spread of infectious diseases to outside parties including hospitals, government, and the general public. The data sources were fragmented and there was no consistency in data analysis.
Today, GIDCC utilizes a single view of data for an agile BI environment and simplifies work processes regarding data collection and analysis. This enables outside researchers to actively participate and use visual data—even if they aren’t traditional analysts. With Tableau Public, GIDCC could expand the reach of information on infectious diseases, providing the ability to share findings with the public in an easy-to-consume format. This improved accessibility—both in data and exploration—will continue to improve reporting and the quality of infectious disease analyses.
Over time, researchers have brought a variety of data sources into Tableau for analysis, including the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Emergency Department Information System, data from public corporation, and epidemiological studies in order to create in-depth analyses by disease, health clinic, population, and so on.
For example, during the 2016 avian flu (AI) outbreak, GIDCC used Tableau as a communications tool to consolidate information from various institutions around Gyeonggi province, sharing mobile-optimized dashboards for field workers.
With Tableau, GIDCC can utilize existing public information systems to influence action. As a result, GIDCC is better able to manage and prevent infectious diseases.
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