Navigating health literacy using interactive data visualisation Enjie Liu, Youbing Zhao, Hui Wei Department of Computer Science and Technology University of Bedfordshire, Luton, UK Stefanos Roumeliotis, Eleni Kaldoudi School of Medicine, Faculty of Life Sciences Democritus University of Thrace, Alexandroupoli, Greece Abstract— It is commonly concluded that health literacy focuses on individual skills to obtain, process and understand health information and services necessary to make appropriate health decisions. To achieve this, an individual first needs to obtain an adequate level of health literacy. However, nowadays, the information that individuals encounter with regards to their health, the amount, credibility and quality of the data make it difficult for one to make judgments on their health and disease progression, let alone make informed decisions on behaviour change. In this paper, we will report our work in providing patients with efficient ways to explore and understand the relevant health literacy. We focus on two data types: 1) harvested medical evidence from PubMed on cardiorenal disease and its comorbidities; 2) data collected from patients including from PHR and wearable sensors. Our work provides ways for patients to visualise this data meaningfully. Our work aims to improve the health literacy for the general public and increase the population’s understanding of the medical field; thus helping users to make informed decision with regards to their care. Keywords—patient oriented services, disease comorbidity, risk predictive models, health literacy I. INTRODUCTION Health literacy has been defined in many different ways since it was first introduced as a term and concept. In 2012, European Health Literacy Consortium noted that: ‘Health literacy is linked to literacy and entails people’s knowledge, motivation and competences to access, understand, appraise and apply health information in order to make judgments and take decisions in everyday life concerning health care, disease prevention and health promotion to maintain or improve quality of life during the life course [1]’. Authors in [2] conducted systematic reviews on health literacy and public health, and found that a shared characteristic of these definitions focus on individual skills to obtain, process and understand health information and the services available to make appropriate health decisions. An individual with an adequate level of health literacy has the ability to take responsibility for one's own health as well as one's family health and community health [3]. Health literacy has attracted considerable attention across the globe in recent years. Research from around the world showed vast potential in demonstrating that optimizing health literacy results in improving health and well-being while reducing health inequities. On the other hand, weak health literacy competencies have been shown to result in less healthy choices, riskier behavior, poorer health, less self- management and more hospitalization [1]. According to a report by WHO Europe, limited health literacy cost more than US$8 billion, an estimated 3-5% of the total health care budget in Canada in 2009. An European Health Literacy Survey [4] conducted in 18 European countries has identified inadequate or problematic health literacy as a key determinant of health, a high-prevalence problem, a drain on human and financial resources and an obstacle to development; action in a range of settings and sectors can enhance health literacy; and building policy to support the strengthening of health literacy at the global, regional, national and local levels. Acquiring relevant and accurate information helps patients to understand their diseases and conditions, and most importantly, to understand the benefits of changing to healthier behaviour. The so-called self-management of a disease outside the conventional clinical setting is an essential complement to clinical care for chronic diseases. For example, Diabetes Self-Management Education (DSME) has changed from a didactic approach focusing on providing information to more theoretically based empowerment models that focus on helping those with diabetes to make informed self- management decisions [5]. The informed knowledge helps patients to improve self-care behavior [6-7], such as improved clinical outcomes, i.e., lower A1C [8-9] in the case of diabetes; lower risk for people at every age for cardiovascular disease via a healthy diet and adequate physical activity [10]. Nowadays, with the popularity of online resources, there is large amount of information available to patients with regards to their diseases; however, given the quantity of information made accessible to patients, the credibility and quality of such data is difficult to judge. In addition, Internet of Things (IoT) technology provides ways to monitor and collect data on a real time basis by sensing and communication capacity. The collected data provides another dimension of health data, but also gives the opportunity to closely follow up a patient’s reaction to the treatments and medicines. However, the issue of making the most out of the data in the self-management process poses as a challenge to ICT and medical professionals. Presenting data to patients in an easy-to-understand way is the first and most important step to widespread health literacy in assisting self-management.