‘The teams behind the apps’ series: meet VisImE-360
'The teams behind the apps' is a series of videos made by
the EU Datathon
[https://data.europa.eu/en/news/op.europa.eu/eudatathon] finalists.
Get to know the people and their proposals for apps over nine
episodes, once a week, in a run-up to the EU Open Data Days
[https://op.europa.eu/en/web/euopendatadays]. During this online event
in November, the teams will pitch their apps to the jury who will
select the winners in the competition finals.

In this seventh episode you get to meet ‘VisImE-360
[https://twitter.com/kidneyepiorg]’. The team is competing with two
other teams in challenge 3: ‘A Europe fit for the digital age’.
Vision impairment is a prevalent health condition worldwide. The
Italian-based tool helps allocate resources for corrections or medical
aid. A wide set of indicators will help stakeholders to map vision
impairment, draw comparisons between various countries, plan public
health actions, and improve access to treatment.

Boris Bikbov [https://www.linkedin.com/in/boris-bikbov-56339a1b/] is
the driving force of VisImE-360 and he joined us for an interview in
which we talked about the app, the idea that led to its creation, and
the progress so far.

HOW ARE YOU DOING WITH THE APP? WHAT’S THE STATUS?

The app is in active development, and it is both exciting and
challenging to implement the visualisation of complex data on so many
topics related to vision impairment in the EU! Through a comprehensive
search, I identified more than 150 Eurostat data sets containing
information of interest and will now use the core parameters in the
first release of the app.

I programmed the reproducible dataflow pipelines to obtain and merge
information, which required some time but will guarantee
sustainability during future data releases. During the construction of
the app, I used the already proven figure types and – prior to this
– produced some visualisations that have never been used before to
better reflect the rich data from Eurostat and other open data
sources. I am particularly dedicated to making the content accessible
for people with different forms of vision impairment, including
decreased visual perception in general and colour vision deficiency or
colour blindness in particular.

The app will be launched in November, just before the EU Datathon.
After that, I will update it with new data and new visualisations,
while the feedback from future users will play an important role in
setting the priorities for its development.

HOW DID YOU COME UP WITH THE IDEA FOR THIS APP?

Eurostat is one of the major providers of open data. Before this
project, I had used only a small amount of its data, which were
already presented in the form of reports or other publications.
However, as a researcher and data scientist, I have always been
interested in working directly with raw data to produce reports,
visualisations and tables that will be useful for others. With this
idea in mind, I started to search for information on which data sets
are available at Eurostat, how dictionaries for their coding are
organised, which other open data exist to complement the full picture,
which approaches for analysis are used, etc. Once I had a good
understanding of these aspects, I realised that a substantial effort
would be required to perform the analysis and present the data in all
its complexity and, I would add, beauty. At this point, I started to
look for grants supporting open data analysis and eventually found the
information about the EU Datathon. I began working on the project the
next day, so that was the beginning of my new journey.

WHO IS YOUR APP FOR?

I expect that the app will be in demand from a wide variety of
stakeholders including policymakers, patient organisations, members of
the media and social service workers, to name but a few. I hope it
will also be interesting to all citizens, both with and without vision
impairment. In addition, I suppose it will be important for the
distributed community of people working in statistical bureaus of all
levels, from local country provinces to the central Eurostat office
– because each report and each app using these data indicate how
indispensable their work is for millions of people.

The app will present a vast set of indicators on the burden of vision
impairment in ‘easy-to-perceive’ visualisations, tables, and short
summaries. These will cover all EU Member States and facilitate better
planning of public health actions to improve access to treatment,
education, and social integration of persons with vision impairment. I
want to make the app that will help people!

To find out more about VisImE-360, watch the 1-minute video
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICUTXSbF0lk]. 

Curious to learn more? Discover all teams and apps via
the EU Datathon website, 
[https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eudatathon]watch their videos on YouTube
[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLT5rARDev_rnik8jF6E8k5AjN5zeJmqXG],
and follow updates on Twitter, 
[https://twitter.com/EU_opendata]LinkedIn,
[https://www.linkedin.com/company/data-europa-eu] and Facebook, 
[https://www.facebook.com/data.europa.eu]or via our newsletter
[https://data.europa.eu/en/newsletter]. 

Publication Date/Time
2021-10-29T12:00:00+00:00
A tool for allocating vision impairment resources