Dashboard Design Guidelines for Improved Evidence Based Decision Making in Public Health in Developing Countries

DHIS2 has established itself as de facto standard for health management information system in developing countries. While DHIS2 provides tools for collecting, analysing and visualising data, history shows that data is often not being used for evidence based decision making. This thesis will look into facilitating improved evidence based decision making through improved dashboard design. This is a part of a larger initiative by HISP UiO to enable DHIS2 being used as an integrated disease surveillance and response (IDSR) system. This thesis identifies dashboard design guidelines and tests them in practice by developing a prototype for an emergency operation centre (EOC) dashboard in Uganda. Additionally, standard DHIS2 dashboards are analysed using the guidelines to test their relevance and to improve dashboards for decision making. The requirement gathering for the EOC dashboard prompted a field trip to Uganda. HISP Uganda presented a proposed IDSR system and the requirements of the EOC dashboard were discussed together with the EOC in Uganda. Broadly, this study shows that there are many reasons why evidence based decision making is lacking. For example, the gap between expert and novice users where having too many options will overwhelm novice users while having too few will hinder the experts in their analysis. The main contribution of the thesis is a set of dashboard design guidelines. I show how these design guidelines fit better with tailored dashboards, where a developer creates a dashboard for a specific purpose and users. Looking at the guidelines in the context of user created dashboards, the approach used for making DHIS2 dashboards, two sets of guidelines are made: guidelines for developers and guidelines for dashboard creators. The thesis also shows that there are still missing features in the data visualisation part of DHIS2 that could yield value if implemented. Additionally, the thesis provides an EOC dashboard prototype and discusses how this can be improved further with the use of the dashboard design guidelines.