Nightingale, the journal of the Data Visualization Society

X-Ray Visualization: A Fine Tradition of Visualizing Medical Data – Plus, introducing a new contest for healthcare visualizations.

X-Ray Visualization: A Fine Tradition of Visualizing Medical Data – Plus, introducing a new contest for healthcare visualizations.

By Will Stahl-Timmins, Data visualisation designer, British Medical Journal, and John Appleby, Director of Research and Chief Economist, The Nuffield Trust

There is a fine tradition of innovation in the visual presentation of health and care data. John Snow produced a map of Cholera cases during the 1854 outbreak in London, England. It clearly shows cases clustered around the Broad Street water pump — the source of infection. A list of addresses would be far harder to interpret than the map. Perhaps Snow realised that the human visual system’s capacity for pattern finding could be harnessed by using data maps such as these.

https://medium.com/nightingale/x-ray-visualization-a-fine-tradition-of-visualizing-medical-data-bd9cad58d884
Contribution from WRR, Will Stahl-Timmins

The BMJ (British Medical Journal)

Visualising health inequalities—Announcing a new data visualisation competition in healthcare. Given the ubiquity of data in our lives it is perhaps unsurprising that methods to help us understand this rising tide of digits have become increasingly popular.

Visualising health inequalities—Announcing a new data visualisation competition in healthcare.

Given the ubiquity of data in our lives it is perhaps unsurprising that methods to help us understand this rising tide of digits have become increasingly popular.12 Techniques such as bar and line charts have helped us to see patterns in numerical data since at least the late 18th century.3 However, the digital revolution has boosted the possibilities for visualising data, and there is now a thriving field of practice and research in “data visualisation.”

https://www.bmj.com/content/367/bmj.l5976?
Contribution from WRR, Will Stahl-Timmins

Summer school

Information Design Summer School

Tutors Rob Waller, Clive Richards and Karel van der Waarde

It’s an intense and exciting introduction to the field, and attracts many people who are not from an information design background, but who have problems they think information design can solve. 
We’ve had medical people, lawyers, technical writers and government administrators, for example.

The summer school is taking a break in 2020 but get in touch to find out about our future plans.