A Data Dashboard for Informed Healthcare Decisions

In recent years, public health surveillance systems have played an important role in tracking health trends, detecting outbreaks early, and protecting communities. With a vast amount of available data, effective visualization tools can simplify the identification of patterns and trends, empowering healthcare specialists to make informed decisions. Our work focuses on developing a comprehensive pandemic surveillance dashboard tailored for healthcare specialists. The dashboard leverages multiple data sources, including wastewater surveillance data, public health data from the Public Health Ontario, Google News for recent news on respiratory diseases, and sentiment analysis of social media engagement on COVID-19 topics in Ontario. These diverse datasets provide a multifaceted perspective on the pandemic's progression. We implemented the dashboard using Power BI to automate data visualization and enable users to explore trends through interactive charts and real-time updates. This tool aims to assist healthcare specialists in monitoring outbreaks, evaluating the impact of interventions, and predicting potential surges in cases. Future studies will focus on correlating trends observed across datasets, such as linking wastewater viral loads with public health metrics and analyzing sentiment analysis data for early outbreak indicators. These efforts aim to further enhance the dashboard’s predictive capabilities and its role in pandemic preparedness. By integrating data from multiple sources and presenting them in an intuitive format, this dashboard serves as a vital tool for public health professionals in their ongoing fight against respiratory pandemics.