Data visualization on global trends on cancer incidence an application of IBM Watson analytics

Abstract

Visual analytics is widely used to explore data patterns and trends. This work leverages cancer data collected by World Health Organization (WHO) across over a hundred of cancer registries worldwide. In this study, we present a visual analytics platform, IBM Watson Analytics, to explore the patterns of global cancer incidence. We included 26 cancers from different geographic regions. An interactive interface was applied to plot a choropleth map to show global cancer distribution, and line charts to demonstrate historical cancer trends over 29 years. Subgroup analyses were conducted for different age groups. With real-time interactive features, we can easily explore the data with a selection of any cancer type, gender, age group, or geographical region. This platform is running on the cloud, so it can handle data in huge volumes, and is assessable by any computer connected to the Internet.