Health Networks and Disparities

Timeline

2016

Description

Computer Science and Psychology major Molly Chen, and Neuroscience major Emily Wu spent ten weeks working with patient diagnosis co-occurence data derived from Duke Electronic Medical Records to develop network visualizations of co-occurring disorders within demographic groups. Their goal was to make healthcare more holistic, and reduce healthcare disparities by improving patient and provider awareness of co-occurring disorders for patients within similar demographic groups.

Project Results

The team built effective visualization tools to represent co-occurence of disorders in a way that not only medical professionals, but also patients and health-conscious individuals can understand. Emily and Molly created a global network representation to display all known medical diagnoses for users to view broader patterns that occur between diseases systems and demographic groups, as well as an ego-network that allows users to query the system for specific diagnoses of interest.

Download the Executive Summary (PDF)

Faculty Sponsor

• Jim Moody, Sociology, Duke Network Analysis Center

• Laura Sheble, Post-doc, Duke Network Analysis Center

• Emily Wu, Duke University Neuroscience


• Molly Chen, Duke University Computer Science, Psychology

• Sociology


• Public Health