Digital Health Dashboards: A Future History?
"We didn’t have to wait months like we did back in 2020. We were able to identify the new virus and its variants in no time, and make a vaccine for it faster than ever."
Authors Note: Hello everyone! My name is Ariana and I was in my fourth year of Bachelors in Honors Specialization in Biology at Western University during my participation in Storyhouse. This narration is based on the research titled Digital Health Dashboards for Decision-Making to Enable Rapid Responses During Public Health Crises: Replicable and Scalable Methodology. To delve into the message of this article, I chose to tell the story from the vantage point of a citizen who has been through two pandemics, similar to our experience with the COVID-19 pandemic.
They say different generations perceives things differently. That was certainly the case with me and my children. For example, they kept reading the definition of pandemic and scoffing at how, to quote their exact words, “dramatic and out-of-proportion” they were.
“I get that they are dangerous and life threatening, don’t get me wrong, but they are nothing that can’t be informed about and control for very quickly and effectively,” my son said with exasperation. “There is no need to make them sound like these scary unknowns that last for years.”
So I sat them down and explained. “Sure, now pandemics might not be a big deal, but it wasn’t always the case. It wasn’t until 2024 that things changed.”
“I remember it like it was yesterday. It was the summer of 2024, everything was going so well. I’d just graduated from university and started a good job at the local clinic. The cold and snow was gone and replaced with a weather so warm that made you forget winter ever existed. The COVID-19 pandemic was controlled for and mostly dealt with; so much so that everyone treated it like a common cold. All in all it seems like it was going to be the perfect summer.
The only thing that made me slightly nervous was the talk about this new disease going around in France or something. It was unsettlingly similar to how the COVID-19 pandemic started and the last thing I wanted was to go back to all that, especially now that I’ve finally had my life in order and things seemed to be going great.
It was like that for about two months and then the inevitable happened. Our worst fears came true. A new pandemic. They called it COVID’s older brother, more deadly and more difficult to understand. I was scared. I’d given up a promotion at my old job to accept the new one and now a new pandemic was not only threatening my new job, but also another lockdown and loss of many lives and health. I wasn’t the only one. We all were scared and tired. All the frustration and confusion almost had everyone so on edge, we were worried there might be a purge.
In the scramble of what is going on and what to do, an announcement was made that calmed things down. Apparently, some scientists had been beta-testing a digital dashboard and it was supposed to be life changing. Citizens would submit their real-life experiences with the pandemic to the portal to help make real-time decisions and rapid responses to the pandemic and policy makers would list all the resources that were helpful but might not be common knowledge.
With all the citizen science information that scientists received everyday, we didn’t have to wait months like we did back in 2020 and were able to identify the new virus and its variants in no time and make a vaccine for it faster than ever. It allowed for rapid responses from scientists, healthcare professionals, and policymakers. People were even able to get more of their questions and problems solved as they could directly contact officials on that platform. Best part was it was accessible to everyone everywhere, whether they were using Mac or windows, or mobiles, iPads, laptops, and even PC’s; and yes, we still used PC’s back in the day.” We chuckled slightly.
“Anyways, after how successful the digital dashboard was in helping control and rapidly respond to the pandemic and other public health crisis worldwide, they implemented it as a default protocol so that is why pandemics are no longer as scary of a notion as they once were. Alright enough chit chat, it’s bed time. Good night.”
This narrative is openly licensed via CC BY 4.0 creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0