Longitudinal Visualization Techniques for Clinical Quality Measures

I recently wrote about Applying Kiviat Visualization to Meaningful Use Clinical Quality Measures.  One additional item that is a limitation to using Kiviat diagrams is the visualization of longitudinal trending of metrics over time.  This same limitation exists with Clinical Quality Measures (CQMs).

I am a big fan of Edward Tufte, and his evangelism on the use of sparklines.  Below is an interpretation of how that same sparkline visualization could be applied to a family of diabetic CQMs  from the Meaningful Use program, that is a modified version of Juhan Sonin's HealthCard:

This technique does make some assumptions.  It appears to look decent with two years of notional data.  However, I think that changes in CQM results will probably be needed over decades.  Also, I am not sure if someone like Tufte would violently object to the introduction of date under the illustration.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. © Rob McCready, 2012.