Dr Tony Rousmaniere PsyD is Associate Director of Counseling at the University of Alaska Fairbanks Student Center for Health and Counseling. Tony has been in touch to share details of some help is seeking from people with data visualisation skills to help work on a fascinating dataset around the clinical outcomes of psychotherapy cases. Let me start off by clarifying that this would be pro-bono work but it will be an excellent opportunity for designers looking for chance to practice on an important, real dataset and it may lead to some valuable media exposure.
Tony sent me the following outline with the hope of attracting somebody out there to get in touch with him to offer support. If you are interested please email Tony Rousmaniere at tgrousmaniere@alaska.edu.
I am a psychotherapist based in Alaska. We use clinical outcome measures to track the effectiveness of our psychotherapy. We have a few years of outcome data, including over 150 clients. This data shows how clients improved, stayed the same, or deteriorated, week-to-week. The data also shows weekly changes in critical issues like suicidality, social problems, etc.
Our goal is to collaborate with a data visualisation artist to present this data so that it is meaningful to the public: to help potential patients understand how effective psychotherapy is, how long it takes to feel better, the chance of not feeling better, the per-session cost/benefit of psychotherapy, etc. This project is about advancing patients’ rights to information.
A secondary goal is that the data will also be useful for public policy-makers in terms of understanding the cost-effectiveness of psychotherapy, when compared to medications, etc.
This project is about making health care data available and meaningful to the public, an important aspect of Health Care Reform. The field of Health Care Reform is very hot right now, and only increasing in importance as health care costs skyrocket and Obamacare is enacted.
We expect that this project will be appealing to popular media, and we aim to publicise it. For example, we expect internet news outlets to pick up this story and show the data visualisation. Blogs related to health care, patient’s rights, and health care reform will also be interested.
Data visualisation skills in the field of health care data will likely soon become a highly sought-after specialty, as consumers and payers become increasingly demanding of cost-effective and efficient treatments. This project is an opportunity to be an early player in this field.
We are a small Counseling Center at a University in Alaska. We do not have funds for this project, so we are looking for an artist to collaborate with on a pro-bono basis. We are hoping that the opportunity to education and empower the public, and gain media exposure as an artist, will be enough incentive for collaboration.
We are also open to other artistic uses of the data, as long as it enhances public understanding of psychotherapy. For example, the data could be used to artistically describe the subjective experience of being in psychotherapy or being a therapist (week by week).
Once again, you can more information about this work on my website www.drtonyr.com and do get in touch via email tgrousmaniere@alaska.edu should you be interested in offering your services.
Moving to central Alaska is not a requirement for this project, but if you like wildlife, you’re welcome to visit!”