# Creating Interactive Data Dashboards for Evidence Syntheses

## TL;DR

This paper introduces a workflow for creating interactive dashboards to make systematic review findings more accessible and useful for diverse audiences.

## Contribution

A structured workflow for building interactive dashboards for systematic reviews, demonstrated with real-world examples in healthcare and education.

## Key findings

- Interactive dashboards improve accessibility and engagement with systematic review data.
- Two examples using Tableau and R Shiny demonstrate the workflow's application in healthcare and education.
- User-friendly dashboards help bridge the research-to-practice gap by tailoring evidence to specific audiences.

## Abstract

Systematic review findings are typically disseminated via static outputs, such as scientific manuscripts, which can limit the accessibility and usability for diverse audiences. Interactive data dashboards transform systematic review data into dynamic, user‐friendly visualizations, allowing deeper engagement with evidence synthesis findings. We propose a workflow for creating interactive dashboards to display evidence synthesis results, including three key phases: planning, development, and deployment. Planning involves defining the dashboard objectives and key audiences, selecting the appropriate software (e.g., Tableau or R Shiny) and preparing the data. Development includes designing a user‐friendly interface and specifying interactive elements. Lastly, deployment focuses on making it available to users and utilizing user‐testing. Throughout all phases, we emphasize seeking and incorporating interest‐holder input and aligning dashboards with the intended audience's needs. To demonstrate this workflow, we provide two examples from previous systematic reviews. The first dashboard, created in Tableau, presents findings from a meta‐analysis to support a U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommendation on lipid disorder screening in children, while the second utilizes R Shiny to display data from a scoping review on the 4‐day school week among K‐12 students in the U.S. Both dashboards incorporate interactive elements to present complex evidence tailored to different interest‐holders, including non‐research audiences. Interactive dashboards can enhance the utility of evidence syntheses by providing a user‐friendly tool for interest‐holders to explore data relevant to their specific needs. This workflow can be adapted to create interactive dashboards in flexible formats to increase the use and accessibility of systematic review findings.

Traditional systematic review data are complex, and outputs are often static and primarily designed for a research audience, limiting their accessibility and utility for diverse audiences.This paper introduces a workflow or creating interactive data dashboards specifically for systematic reviews, with its application demonstrated through two real‐world examples from previous reviews in healthcare and education.Interactive dashboards transform how systematic review findings are shared, enhancing accessibility, engagement, and practical application across diverse audiences.This workflow provides readers with actionable guidance to make systematic review findings more relevant to their intended audiences, helping to reduce the research to practice gap.

Traditional systematic review data are complex, and outputs are often static and primarily designed for a research audience, limiting their accessibility and utility for diverse audiences.

This paper introduces a workflow or creating interactive data dashboards specifically for systematic reviews, with its application demonstrated through two real‐world examples from previous reviews in healthcare and education.

Interactive dashboards transform how systematic review findings are shared, enhancing accessibility, engagement, and practical application across diverse audiences.

This workflow provides readers with actionable guidance to make systematic review findings more relevant to their intended audiences, helping to reduce the research to practice gap.