While many people worry about catching obscure diseases, the truth is that we are far more likely to die from a small range of illnesses. But you can lessen the likelihood of succumbing to the most common causes of death by knowing your risk factors and making informed choices. It’s a topic that our friends at GOOD — which is the magazine and website for people who want “to do good” — tackled to create GE’s latest visualization tool, the fifth in our series.While many people worry about catching obscure diseases, the truth is that we are far more likely to die from a small range of illnesses. But you can lessen the likelihood of succumbing to the most common causes of death by knowing your risk factors and making informed choices. It’s a topic that our friends at GOOD — which is the magazine and website for people who want “to do good” — tackled to create GE’s latest visualization tool, the fifth in our series.
Some surprises: Clicking on the image takes you to an expanded web page featuring the stats. The information, taken from the Centers for Disease Control, shows the most likely cause of death in the United States — excluding uncontrollable events like accidents and homicide — given a person’s race, sex, and age. The blues and pinks in the chart are men and women, respectively.
The thinking behind data visualization is that because healthcare is so incredibly complex, we need to find new ways to synthesize, simplify and communicate the vast amount of information that’s becoming available daily. With three visualization tools from the team at Seed Visualization in our series and two from GOOD thus far, GE’s goal is to to use the information — some of which draws on the six million patient records in GE’s proprietary electronic medical records — to increase awareness about important health trends. That awareness, in turn, can help increase access to care — which is one of the drivers of GE’s healthymagination strategy.
Try out our other visualization tools:
* GOOD’s World Health info-graphic shows the money 12 countries spend on healthcare
* Seed’s The Cost of Getting Sick tool shows the cost of chronic conditions
* Seed’s Health Issues tool shows how some conditions are related to one another
* Seed’s How’s Your Health Profile? tool lets you see conditions common to your profile
* See a video in “Ben Fry & Seed labs visualize The Cost of Getting Sick”
* Read “Visualizing world health with the data artists at GOOD” on GE Reports
* Learn more about our healthymagination business strategy
