OMA DataWatch:

This latest instalment of EPR DataWatch – part of an ongoing series of data-focused articles prepared by the OMA Economics, Policy & Research (EPR) Department – touches on the plethora of data generated by COVID-19, and highlights the challenges faced when attempting to comb through and summarize a vast amount of information in a way that is both understandable and meaningful to members.

EPR continues to investigate new data, update existing data, and process and summarize a multitude of data sources to provide daily updates on the evolution of the COVID-19 pandemic in Ontario.

The EPR COVID-19 dashboards have been well received by members and external stakeholders, such as the Ministry of Health, Public Health, and various research institutions. They have been viewed over 135,000 times and revised where possible based on member feedback.

Key Challenges

• COVID-19 has resulted in many Health Units, the Government of Ontario, hospitals and news outlets to report various information on the number of cases, hospitalizations, deaths, assessment centres, and much more.
• Every institution generates and reports data in their preferred way, from simple text and lists on a webpage, to downloadable PDF or Excel documents. These are often stand-alone reports that target the general audience without providing much insight or analytical results.
• The information is not easily found, nor is it presented for quick, daily updates and takeaways.
• While there is a lot of useful data being generated and publicly provided by various sources, it is very time-consuming to clean and assemble this data together and provide meaningful insight into how this pandemic is evolving and how it’s affecting the people of Ontario.

Given the challenges, the OMA EPR Department took initiative and developed meaningful, member-focused summaries and visualizations to help understand the trends of COVID-19 in Ontario.

At a Glance

Once staff streamlined the data collection from public data sources, it was possible to process the information and generate meaningful summaries. The addition of demographic and geographic data, (e.g.: Public Health Units, and Local Integrated Health Networks) allowed staff to visualize Ontario’s state in its fight against COVID-19 and make it more meaningful to members (Figure 1: COVID-19 Cases by Public Health Unit in Ontario).

Supplementing the data with population information (age and gender-split), and setting up a framework to continuously provide daily updates with current COVID-19 statistics, staff were able to create an overview of total cases in Ontario and plot out a trend. Statistics such as cases per population, number of active cases and daily new deaths may provide a better understanding as to where additional help for testing, consultation or physician-power may be needed.

As Ontario’s understanding of COVID-19’s impact on long-term care and other institutions evolved, so did the need to represent this data. Figure 2 and Figure 3 (Active COVID-19 Outbreaks by Institution Type) include important information about patients in nursing homes and retirement homes. Centralizing and visualizing this information to help better understand the severity can direct attention to the most vulnerable groups in our population.

Interactive Online Visualizations

Staff created dashboards that are mobile-friendly to allow for easy accessibility. “Clickable” buttons allow you to simply move across dashboards as needed. We encourage you to explore our visualizations, and check back frequently to see the most up-to-date information as we go through this pandemic together. All visualizations are accessible through the following links:

• Figure 1: COVID-19 Cases by Public Health Unit Map

• Figure 2: COVID-19 Metrics

• Figure 3: COVID-19 by Institution Type

Feedback

The OMA appreciates any feedback from members. Please email questions or comments to any of the following EPR staff: Thomas.Fruehauf@oma.org, Mahta.Norouzi@oma.org, or Steve.Nastos@oma.org.