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What is Data Visualization & why is it important in the data analysis process?

Writer: RICHA RAMBHIARICHA RAMBHIA
Nov 5, 20222 min read

Updated: Sep 2, 2023

Data visualization is one of the important phases in the data analysis process as that gives a better understanding of the data to the audience. It is the process where humongous amount of data set is translated into charts, graphs or tables which makes it easy to identify the patterns and outliers in the data.


The visual representations created should be understandable by the audience which is the key factor when it comes to data visualizations. With the large amount of data present, it becomes difficult to identify and find out insights about the data and thus using visual representations, colors, and patterns to represent the data is more effective and understandable to the users. The target audience becomes another key factor while data visualization as knowing what their level of data understanding is so as to represent data accordingly. It is also important to understand why there is a need of the data visualization rather than just creating a dashboard which would have no importance in any decision making.


The data visualization in the healthcare field is an important domain as visualizing healthcare data can help the doctors and management in gaining a better understanding of the patterns and trends of the hospital, so let’s consider an example for the same.


Audience: Hospital Staff

1. Cost of Admission by Department


The above graph is a simple bar graph which would help the hospitals understand how the financial resources are being utilized. From the year 2011 to 2013, the shifts in the relative costs between each department has been addressed. This not only gives us information about the relative costs of a particular department in the year but also helps in indicating an issue which can be addressed.


Now, a better way to visualize the same data would be through a line chart. This visualization gives a clearer understanding of the data than that of the bar graph.



Here it is clearly understandable the relative costs for each department in the year and can be easily compared where the significant information becomes visible immediately as compared to that in the bar graph.


2. Leading Diagnoses by number of patients, cost and days admitted


Here, the data representation is kept in tabular format to quickly gain insights about the data. The data visualization here represents the various diagnosis, the number of patients under that disease, the average cost for the treatment and the average number of days a patient is admitted in the hospital for that particular diagnosis. This gives the management and doctors of the hospital an idea about the patients being admitted to the hospital for a particular number of days for each diagnosis.



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