Dashboards are in great demand because they are great information management and decision-making tools. Dashboards keep everyone on the same page and are very effective communication tools as well. The best dashboards are tightly focused so that there is no confusion about the prize.
Dashboards are versatile. They can help manage schedules, production, resources, and headcount requirements. Dashboards can help in forecasting revenue, expense, or hospital room occupancy. Dashboards can also provide insights your information, like where it came from, when and who touched the data, what they did to it, and even the accuracy and quality of the underlying data.
Care needs to be taken to make sure your decision making is based on sound data. Think of dashboards like the part of an iceberg that sticks out of the water. The visible part of the iceberg, the dashboard, is a small part of the whole. As with the Titanic, the underlying iceberg, or the underlying data, is super critical.
Mark Twain popularized the phrase Lies, damned lies, and statistics. Regrettably, this phrase can apply to dashboards. Dashboards are both created and used by humans, which means there is real potential for unintended bias. In other words, decisions about what data is displayed, how it is displayed, and how people interpret the dashboard can produce negative unintended consequences.
Again, dashboards reflect the underlying data and this information is the critical foundation that makes dashboards valuable. When good information is added to the underlying database, you’ll have good information displayed by the dashboard. It cannot be stressed enough how important it is that thought be given to ensuring the veracity of the data. Data quality is a topic for another blog but the point is that there needs to be agreement on what good data is, and how gathering that data can be done in a controlled way that ensures quality data and quality decision making.
Thinking through how the data will be used is equally important. Obviously, some decisions in healthcare are life and death. If the decisions to be made are patient care decisions, the underlying data how it was collected and delivered to the database, as well as the dashboard design needs to be thoroughly vetted. On the other hand, a dashboard that helps schedule staff, while important, does not need the same level of scrutiny. A scheduling dashboard is not intended for, nor is it being used, to diagnose and treat a sick patient.
Lastly, dashboards are end user tools and “usability” needs to be considered in the design. There is a human tendency towards “more is better.” Including too much information makes it hard to focus on the most important information. Remember, the dashboard is intended to help make great decisions and to keep everyone on the same page. Fight the urge to classify all of your data as important. If you must, create multiple dashboards that tightly focus one’s attention on the prize.
Extract has provided dashboards to its customers for some time and we’ve learned a few previously mentioned lessons the hard way. We regularly go through a process of reimagining our dashboards because we want to make sure we bring a tight focus to our customer’s decision making. If you’d like to learn more about how these dashboards can enhance your processes, please reach out.
About the Author: David Rasmussen
David Rasmussen is the President of Extract. With 30 years’ experience leading software companies, David is driven by the challenge to consistently find groundbreaking ways to solve customer problems. David finds it rewarding to hit the customer’s target and create a great team, build a solid infrastructure, and emerge with a strong value proposition.