Development of a Real-Time Dashboard for Overdose Touchpoints: User-Centered Design Approach

Area of Science:

• Public Health
• Data Science
• Health Informatics

Background:

• Overdose Fatality Reviews (OFRs) are vital for community overdose prevention.
• Current OFR methods review limited cases, potentially leading to incomplete understanding of local overdose patterns and suboptimal policy recommendations.

Purpose of the Study:

• To explore enhancing conventional OFRs using a data dashboard with visualizations of pre-overdose events (touchpoints).
• To identify opportunities for overdose prevention by analyzing decedent interactions with services.

Main Methods:

• Conducted focus groups and a survey with OFR experts (N=27) to define information needs.
• Designed and developed a real-time dashboard tracking decedent interactions with health and justice services in Indiana.
• Incorporated expert feedback on essential data features and visualization design.

Main Results:

• Experts emphasized visualizing interactions with emergency medical services and the justice system.
• Decedent anonymity and training in data interpretation were highlighted as key considerations.
• The dashboard visualizes touchpoint metrics (prevalence, frequency, timing) at county and state levels.
• Initial evaluations showed the dashboard offers comprehensive data and can improve OFR recommendations.

Conclusions:

• The Indiana touchpoints dashboard is the first to integrate real-time administrative and overdose mortality data.
• It provides timely, quantitative, and spatiotemporal insights into overdose risk factors for data-driven interventions.
• Successful integration into OFR practices may necessitate training for data interpretation and decision-making.