Bringing data to life — saving lives with data visualization

Florence Nightingale (1820-1910) is known for her merits as a nurse and paramedic - her pioneering achievements in the second half of the 19th century continue to shape the foundations of modern health and nursing.

However, the fact that she successfully underpinned her persuasion through data collection, data analyses - and, above all, data visualizations - is not quite as well known and is therefore also considered a pioneer in this area.

Nightingale recognized, especially during her service in the Crimean War, that the death rate of soldiers was only due to direct acts of war to a relatively small extent. Most people died from infections and other preventable diseases. For this purpose, she developed the Polar Area Chart (1858) in which she weighted the individual months ('pieces of cake ') of the year based on the total number of deaths by the respective size and also showed the proportion of avoidable cases in color.

After her tireless work and exemplary organization on site in trouble spots, she was later forced to continue working from home due to illness. This led them even more to comprehensively collect, collect and statistically evaluate data from the healthcare sector. She sent out questionnaires, but also drew on existing material such as government reports and official statements.

She derived scientific findings from all this material and implemented them as visual graphics in statistical reports, as she was aware of the power of the visual. In her government reports, she illustrated that failure to take appropriate medical measures has a similar effect as shooting 1,000 of your own soldiers a year. She successfully used her popularity to put pressure on politics. Among other things, it threatened to publish various reports if the British government did not make improvements in medical services.

In addition to the fact-based description of the conditions, she used data analyses to identify the necessary measures to improve the living conditions of soldiers: preventive hygiene measures, central (military) hospitals, improved training of doctors and nurses, and much more.

Their tireless work had corresponding effects: The death rate of soldiers fell significantly in subsequent years - documented by the statistical office of the British government that was introduced on the basis of their reports.

It owes its popularity primarily to the visual processing of the statistical material: it was also possible for statistically and mathematically less affine people to understand correlations and causalities.

After returning from the war, she published the books 'Notes of Hospital, 'and later 'Notes on Nursing,' which cover all sorts of healthcare topics, whether in hospital or at home. Nightingale always had a holistic approach of care, starting with the right diet, through proper ventilation and involving loved ones for an optimal recovery. She always considered the full range of physical and psychological circumstances for the patients.

In 1860 she founded England's first nursing school 'Florence Nightingale Faculty of Nursing and Midwifery' in London - a world-leading academic school of health care at St. Thomas Hospital, which has been providing people with its medical services free of charge since the 12th century.

Thanks to Nightingale, the — previously rather wicked and unpopular — profession as a nurse gained great reputation. Her work was also recognized abroad: hospitals were set up all over the world in accordance with her standards and recommendations. It had laid the foundation for how hospitals must be built so that they could be managed effectively and hygienically.