Parallax launches scrolling data story for QualityWatch

QualityWatch is a joint research programme from the Nuffield Trust and the Health Foundation, monitoring how the quality of health and social care is changing over time. Each year QualityWatch publishes an annual statement commenting on the current state of care in the NHS in England, drawing on information from their extensive range of care quality indicators. This has previously taken the form of a PDF report with an accompanying static infographic. This year they wanted to do something different. Are patients benefitting from better integrated care?The theme was the state of ‘integrated care’; something we here at Parallax are familiar with following our work with the NHS and our recent tender win for the Home Group. The project focuses on the question ‘are patients benefiting from better integrated care?’ – attempting to assess how effectively the health service has managed to join up care between hospitals, GPs, local councils and other healthcare providers to improve patients’ experiences and achieve greater efficiency.

An Interactive Scrolling Data Story

Rather than a static PDF and long printable report they wanted to create a simpler, single page interactive report that could be easily shared online. It needed to tell the story of the state of integrated care while visualising key findings from the data. Equally, it was important that everything was branded using the QualityWatch style. We designed and built an engaging interactive report that introduced these different areas, and showcased the key trends and data. We used Highcharts, a JavaScript charting library to create dynamic and interactive charts to show the data. To summarise all the trends we created a simple ‘scorecard’ that follows the user down the page and counts which trends are improving or getting worse. ,For a data-heavy site, we designed illustrations to add richness and clarify concepts. The illustrations provide a visual break from the graphs, helping to tell a story and engage our target audience.,So much interactivity on one page can be incredibly cumbersome on the users' network, so we needed to leverage cutting edge techniques to deliver an impactful, interactive and sleek experience - yet not over-rely on a fast network speed. We incorporated modern Javascript technologies such as IntersectionObserver, as well as utilising compression and bundling strategies to keep file sizes small. The result is a zero-compromise solution, powered by beautiful visuals and modern web technologies, which is blazing fast.,Parallax were able to utilise a range of graphic elements, illustrations and simple animations to guide users through a wide-ranging dataset in a way that keeps users engaged, helping bring the sometimes complex but important subject matter of measuring integrated care to life.