PublicDashboards.com Announces Three New Public Dashboards Focused on Health-Related Issues

Dec. 9, 2008 - PRLog -- El Dorado Hills, California -- VisualCalc, a provider of web-based analysis software and the creator of PublicDashboards.com (www.PublicDashboards.com), today announced the introduction of three new public dashboards focused on health-related issues. These new public dashboards help highlight key trends and data related to health care that might otherwise go un-noticed; for example:

• U.S. health expenditures as a percentage of the Gross Domestic Product have increased from 7.2% in 1970 to 16% in 2006.

• While the U.S. adult smoking rate has decreased over the last 10 years, from 24.7% to 20.8%, the obesity rate has increased, from 19.4% to 27.4%.

• Kentucky has the highest cancer death rate in the U.S., followed by Mississippi, Louisiana, and Tennessee.

• Life expectancy in the U.S. increased from 49 years in 1900 to 78 years in 2004.

The three new public dashboards include the Health Insurance Dashboard, the Public Health Dashboard, and the Life Expectancy Dashboard.

• The Health Insurance Dashboard contains key indicators focused on the U.S. health care system, including trends in insurance premiums and health care expenditures, as well as a comparison of U.S. health care spending versus other countries.

• The Public Health Dashboard incorporates indicators shedding insight on issues at the center of public health debates, including teen pregnancy, drug use, obesity, and smoking.

• The Life Expectancy Dashboard includes indictors centered on life expectancy and illnesses, including cancer rates, heart disease, and AIDS.

These three new dashboards will be incorporated into VisualCalc’s public dashboard website: PublicDashboards.com. PublicDashboards.com contains a set of interactive dashboards covering a variety of topical issues, including the 2008 presidential election, the U.S. housing market, inflation and gas prices, the environment, education statistics, employment trends, and now health-related data. PublicDashboards.com organizes detailed, complex data related to these issues into interactive, easy-to-use charts and graphs called indicators. These visual indicators help users identify trends or issues that might otherwise go undetected. In addition, these indicators enable users to perform deeper analysis into the underlying data. With a simple point-and-click, users can filter and drill-down into any of the indicators to customize their view of the data.

“Issues related to health care, and, particularly, health insurance, have been extremely prevalent in today’s news,” said Amit Mazumdar, CEO of VisualCalc. “These free health-related public dashboards will help the public gain deeper insight into the real facts surrounding these topics.”

Organizations that track or communicate information related to any of these topics – including public or commercial websites and online or print media – are welcome to include links to these public dashboards on their websites. These links can be found on the PublicDashboards.com website.

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About VisualCalc: VisualCalc (www.visualcalc.com) provides easy, affordable, web-based analysis software. Since its founding in 2000, VisualCalc has been focused on its vision of making the analysis of complex data accessible to the everyday user. VisualCalc’s unique combination of technology and expertise helps consumers and businesses alike analyze complex data quickly and easily, resulting in better, faster decisions. VisualCalc’s analysis software includes two categories of products: 1) VisualCalc Online Calculators, which companies provide to their customers to help them quickly and easily evaluate their products and services, and 2) VisualCalc Management Dashboards, which help companies monitor and manage their business. VisualCalc is also the creator of PublicDashboards.com, a free website containing public dashboards focused on today’s most topical issues. VisualCalc is a privately held company headquartered in El Dorado Hills, California.