Visualising Health And Disease

One of my favourite sub­jects of visu­al­i­sa­tions are those that deal with health and dis­ease. At some point or another we’ll all need med­ical help, whether in an emer­gency sit­u­a­tion or ongo­ing care and treat­ment as we age. What fas­ci­nates me is being able to see which coun­tries offer the best med­ical ser­vices and their pol­i­tics towards this care.

Also, track­ing dis­ease is another of my favourite forms of visu­al­i­sa­tion, and it’s been used for hun­dreds of years. I’m not going to men­tion John Snow here, but if you don’t know about his inves­ti­ga­tion into a cholera out­break in 19th cen­tury Lon­don then you should go and read about it.

Con­ta­gion

Ori­gin of dis­eases — Haisem Hussein

This beau­ti­ful map charts the ori­gins of dis­ease, where that dis­ease was car­ried to and the drop off of the con­ta­gions over dis­tance carried.

The Cost of Health

Cost of health­care — Good Magazine

A lovely info­graphic from Good Mag­a­zine shows the cost of health care per capita and their life expectancy across a range of countries.

Every coun­try in the world approaches health care dif­fer­ently, but the end goal is the same: Keep cit­i­zens as healthy as pos­si­ble at the low­est cost. Some coun­tries spend a lot on health care, but see don’t see great ben­e­fits for those expen­di­tures among their cit­i­zens. Oth­ers, at least by the met­rics below, are find­ing ways to reach both goals. This info­graphic is a look at 12 coun­tries around the world that exam­ines how far the money they spend on health care goes toward affect­ing the health of their citizens.

Health Map

Inter­ac­tive world health map — HealthMap.org

This neat lit­tle appli­ca­tion mon­i­tors and tracks out­breaks of dis­ease across the globe and plots them on a map.

NYTimes Swine Flu Cases

Track­ing Swine Flu — The New York Times

More than a year old now but at the height of the swine flu out­break this inter­ac­tive info­graphic from the NYTimes allowed you to quickly see the fre­quency of out­breaks being reported plot­ted sim­ply on a world map.