Digital Health Dashboards for Decision-Making to Enable Rapid Responses During Public Health Crises: Replicable and Scalable Methodology

Abstract

Background The COVID-19 pandemic has reiterated the need for cohesive, collective, and deliberate societal efforts to address inherent inefficiencies in our health systems and overcome decision-making gaps using real-time data analytics. To achieve this, decision makers need independent and secure digital health platforms that engage citizens ethically to obtain big data, analyze and convert big data into real-time evidence, and finally, visualize this evidence to inform rapid decision-making. Objective The objective of this study is to develop replicable and scalable jurisdiction-specific digital health dashboards for rapid decision-making to ethically monitor, mitigate, and manage public health crises via systems integration beyond health care. Methods The primary approach in the development of the digital health dashboard was the use of global digital citizen science to tackle pandemics like COVID-19. The first step in the development process was to establish an 8-member Citizen Scientist Advisory Council via Digital Epidemiology and Population Health Laboratory’s community partnerships. Based on the consultation with the council, three critical needs of citizens were prioritized: (1) management of household risk of COVID-19, (2) facilitation of food security, and (3) understanding citizen accessibility of public services. Thereafter, a progressive web application (PWA) was developed to provide daily services that address these needs. The big data generated from citizen access to these PWA services are set up to be anonymized, aggregated, and linked to the digital health dashboard for decision-making, that is, the dashboard displays anonymized and aggregated data obtained from citizen devices via the PWA. The digital health dashboard and the PWA are hosted on the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud server. The digital health dashboard’s interactive statistical navigation was designed using the Microsoft Power Business Intelligence tool, which creates a secure connection with the Amazon Relational Database server to regularly update the visualization of jurisdiction-specific, anonymized, and aggregated data. Results The development process resulted in a replicable and scalable digital health dashboard for decision-making. The big data relayed to the dashboard in real time reflect usage of the PWA that provides households the ability to manage their risk of COVID-19, request food when in need, and report difficulties and issues in accessing public services. The dashboard also provides (1) delegated community alert system to manage risks in real time, (2) bidirectional engagement system that allows decision makers to respond to citizen queries, and (3) delegated access that provides enhanced dashboard security. Conclusions Digital health dashboards for decision-making can transform public health policy by prioritizing the needs of citizens as well as decision makers to enable rapid decision-making. Digital health dashboards provide decision makers the ability to directly communicate with citizens to mitigate and manage existing and emerging public health crises, a paradigm-changing approach, that is, inverting innovation by prioritizing community needs, and advancing digital health for equity. International Registered Report Identifier (IRRID) RR1-10.2196/46810

Inverting social innovation to transform health system responses to climate change adaptation and mitigation in the global south

“…Repurposing existing digital infrastructure aids rapid responses irrespective of the location of implementation—a capability that is critical for climate change adaptation and mitigation. Following this replicability-focused approach, emerging cutting-edge evidence indicates that the first step in developing and implementing digital health platforms for decision-making is to adapt existing cloud-based and decentralized digital infrastructure ( 51 ). An important aspect of this infrastructure is progressive web applications that can be built with web technologies, installed, and run on all digital devices or web browsers without the need to launch on Google and Apple stores ( 31 ).…”

“…An important aspect of this infrastructure is progressive web applications that can be built with web technologies, installed, and run on all digital devices or web browsers without the need to launch on Google and Apple stores ( 31 ). In essence, this decentralized approach can minimize dependency on big technology companies in responding to climate change ( 32 , 51 ).…”

“…All data from individual households can be encrypted, aggregated, and anonymized before being relayed to a digital decision-making dashboard to be housed with the key decision-makers in each jurisdiction. Decision-makers can use digital health dashboards to sustain real-time support for citizens and use big data for rapid responses ( 33 , 51 ). For instance, decision-makers can send jurisdiction-specific disaster management alerts to mitigate and manage health risks, irrespective of the disaster (i.e., earthquakes, droughts, flooding, and forest fires) ( 51 ).…”

“…Decision-makers can use digital health dashboards to sustain real-time support for citizens and use big data for rapid responses ( 33 , 51 ). For instance, decision-makers can send jurisdiction-specific disaster management alerts to mitigate and manage health risks, irrespective of the disaster (i.e., earthquakes, droughts, flooding, and forest fires) ( 51 ). The most advanced versions of these digital health dashboards can also support anonymous bi-directional engagement with citizens ( 51 ).…”

“…Citizen-driven big data can transform responses to climate change risks across jurisdictions through the use of digital platforms. In particular, these platforms can amplify citizen voices for two key climate change adaptation and mitigation solutions: (1) Provide citizens with near real-time support and (2) Ethically relay citizen big data to decision-makers for rapid responses ( 51 ). Most importantly, digital platforms powered by citizen big data are not limited by jurisdictional boundaries, i.e., they can transform responses to climate change risks across jurisdictions—a potential paradigm-changing approach to social innovation.…”