Interactive Maps for UNOS Data Visualization

Abstract

Purpose In the United States, heart allocation is administered by the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS). UNOS collects demographics and clinical data for all transplant candidates, donors, and recipients listed since 1995. While the data is available to the public upon requests; it has been used predominately for research rather than clinical decision making, transplant patient use and policy makers. The aim of this project is to build a web application to visualizes UNOS data and promote easy access to summary statistics for diverse members of the transplant community. Methods This highly interactive web application was developed using the UNOS data between 2006 and 2014 using modern Javascript-based technologies such as Vue.js and Google Maps to show graphs, choropleth and kriging maps. The application is made publicly available on the internet to allow the users to visualize different statistics for different geographic granularity level, (i.e., Transplant center, OPO's donor service area and UNOS region) either by directly selecting locations on the USA map or by selecting an option from a drop-down menu. Several statistics are visualized for different years and for heart-alone or multi-organ transplants. A general map of the US is visible to show the data at the national and OPO levels to give an overall view of the geographic differences across the US states. Drop-down menus are available to select the preferred statistics and indicators by transplant center or UNOS region. Results Several statistics are displayed for different geographic levels and for each year between 2006 and 2014. The set of statistics includes: Probability of receiving a donor heart, % of declined offers because of quality reasons, % of accepted offers of low/medium/high quality, Average cold-ischemic time of the transplanted organs, Average waiting time of a recipient, 1-year, 3-years, 5-years post-transplant mortality rate, 1-year, 3-years, 5-years post-transplant graft failure rate, % of unused organs, % of declined offers because of quality reasons. Conclusion The web application creates maps of several statistics summarizing the available data to provide a useful tool to support decisions for a general audience. The provided interactive maps are a useful tool for improved visual understanding of the heart transplant information for abroad audience, including, patients, OPOs, transplant surgeons and policy makers.