Creating Interactive Data Dashboards for Evidence Syntheses

Abstract

Systematic review findings are typically disseminated via static outputs, such as scientific manuscripts, which can limit the accessibility and usability for diverse audiences. Interactive data dashboards transform systematic review data into dynamic, user-friendly visualizations, allowing deeper engagement with evidence synthesis findings. We propose a workflow for creating interactive dashboards to display evidence synthesis results, including three key phases: planning, development, and deployment. Planning involves defining the dashboard objectives and key audiences, selecting the appropriate software (e.g., Tableau or R Shiny) and preparing the data. Development includes designing a user-friendly interface and specifying interactive elements. Lastly, deployment focuses on making it available to users and utilizing user-testing. Throughout all phases, we emphasize seeking and incorporating interest-holder input and aligning dashboards with the intended audience's needs. To demonstrate this workflow, we provide two examples from previous systematic reviews. The first dashboard, created in Tableau, presents findings from a meta-analysis to support a U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommendation on lipid disorder screening in children, while the second utilizes R Shiny to display data from a scoping review on the 4-day school week among K-12 students in the U.S. Both dashboards incorporate interactive elements to present complex evidence tailored to different interest-holders, including non-research audiences. Interactive dashboards can enhance the utility of evidence syntheses by providing a user-friendly tool for interest-holders to explore data relevant to their specific needs. This workflow can be adapted to create interactive dashboards in flexible formats to increase the use and accessibility of systematic review findings.