Data Innovations
Wastewater Dashboard
Monitoring respiratory illness with wastewater data
As the COVID-19 pandemic progressed into later stages, it became apparent to public health officials that surveillance systems like testing or reported case numbers were becoming less reliable and needed supplementary indicators. If people are not getting tested or going into the hospital for treatment as often, how do we know when the next spike could be happening?
Compared to other methods, wastewater testing is a more consistent indicator of a community’s health trend when used to predict the prevalence of COVID-19. By testing wastewater, we have an early warning sign to track the virus through inexpensive, non-invasive means amongst a large number of people. To address the public’s need for new ways to identify rises in COVID-19, IDOH set out wastewater in a novel way.
Using a CDC Grant amongst other funding methods, Epidemiologists and the Office of Data Analytics (ODA) undertook a 6-month process of creating a public dashboard and reports for local health departments that aggregated wastewater samples to the state level. Although there were challenges, it was clear to IDOH that wastewater would have a high payoff, and we were uniquely suited to use the testing data in a way other health organizations are not.
The final product was the Wastewater Dashboard, which tracks COVID within a community and provides health departments with a reliable tool to make informed decisions. The effort was trailblazing and used new technical methods to analyze trends. More importantly, this novel framework is repeatable for tracking other respiratory illnesses.
Indiana is one of the first states to have tracked wastewater to this level and maturity. IDOH was able to aggregate data from separate (public and private) treatment and laboratory facilities, which is a difficult process, and combine results at the state level. Most states have not been able to achieve this. In fact, other state health departments have proactively contacted Indiana to share to learn about Indiana's best practices with wastewater data.
What’s next? The possibilities of tracking other respiratory illnesses are exciting. All work to date has used COVID data, but monitoring other viruses (i.e., flu or Respiratory Syncytial Virus) to track health trends could be unlocked with the right data. COVID wastewater monitoring was a fantastic start, but more exciting opportunities are yet to come as IDOH continues to support public health.
Interested in learning how data can impact your program area? Contact Peter Krombach, Director of Data Operations, Governance & Engagement, PKrombach1@health.in.gov, for more information.
COVID-19 Dashboards
Creating public health awareness
COVID-19's impact on Indiana made it critical for information on the virus to be made publicly available to create transparency and inform the public on its prevalence within the state.
To do so, novel data reports would need to be created to inform the public on infections, fatalities, vaccines, and more. Data from multiple internal and external sources (NBS, CHIRP, US Census, and others) were combined, cleaned, and prepared for Tableau, a data analytics tool.
This scale of accuracy and reporting would be difficult and not secure at an individual laptop; therefore, ACE was leveraged to combine a variety of data sets to keep information secure and collaborative. As a result, four public dashboards were created and are updated weekly to keep information up to date. Indiana now has in-depth and easy to understand information on COVID-19, ensuring public health awareness as the endemic illness continues in Indiana.
Vital Records
Process automation
The Indiana Department of Health Division of Vital Records is responsible for maintaining and issuing certified copies of vital records and has been maintaining this information for over 100 years. These records include birth, death, and fetal death certificates for events that occurred in Indiana. Nearly every department that uses data relies on Vital Records information in some capacity. Every year, a lengthy process was used to keep this information up to date and took place over a whole calendar year.
To improve the quality and efficiency of this process, ACE was used to standardize Vital Records datasets. Many yearly historical files on a shared drive were combined with live data from DRIVE into a single dataset. Every year recorded data differently and hosted a significant amount of data. Therefore, data was standardized, and several steps were automated to improve efficiency.
At the project's conclusion, birth and death records were combined into common datasets making information much easier to find and update. Where the process used to take nearly a year, it can now be done several times over in the same timeframe, saving time, accuracy, and more quickly housing thousands of birth, death, and other records for programs to use in public health reporting. Without ACE, the process would remain a fully manual and lengthy process where programs would have otherwise been unable to analyze months' worth of current information.
PHADS
Using data to tell public health stories
Data can be used to tell stories about public health in an interactive, interesting way so anyone can understand or be inspired by its insights. The Public Health Analytics Data Storytelling project was created to do just that. More specifically, the Office and Data Analytics is partnering IDOH program areas to create interactive dashboards that help tell their stories and inform the public.
