title: Data presentation for quality improvement.
abstract: Efforts to improve quality of medical care often involve large data sets. Reviewing laboratory results over time for a cohort of patients is particularly problematic: traditional statistics conflate case to case variations with day to day variations (within a case). To help solve this problem, we propose using sparklines for case by case review and a modified box-plot for overall data review. We demonstrate these data presentations using fingerstick glucose values.
authors.affiliation: Center for Medical Informatics, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA.
authors.forename: Prem
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Thomas
authors.forename: Seth
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Powsner
mesh_terms: D001296:Audiovisual Aids; D001786:Blood Glucose / Q000032:analysis*; D003626:Data Display; D003920:Diabetes Mellitus / Q000097:blood / Q000628:therapy; D006801:Humans; D011785:Quality Assurance, Health Care; D013223:Statistics as Topic
chemical_list: D001786:Blood Glucose