IHME Collaborator
2018 iSchool Capstone
Christy Lu
Joyce Huang
Aisha Toulegenova
A streamlined system for managing collaborator comments
The Project
UW’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) is an organization that works to diagnose global health problems and find solutions. To accomplish this mission, IHME leads the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) project which acts as a tool to quantify health data across countries so that everyone can live healthier lives no matter where live. The findings of these studies are used by the United Nations, the World Health Organization, and by policymakers around the world to make investment decisions that directly impact the health of their citizens. For their publications, IHME gathers feedback from collaborators around the world.
We’ve built a streamlined system for managing comments in the form of a website, which drastically changes the comment triaging process from taking weeks to 30 seconds.
The Problem
Each paper receives around 4000 comments but the process of organizing those comments in order to act on them can take up to 3 weeks. IHME’s publications officers were manually organizing every single comment into a Google sheet. In addition to this, many of the comments received were duplicates or were inapplicable due to lack of understanding of the feedback requirements, so taking the time to identify and delete these was "repetitive and painstaking work." The longer this process is delayed, the longer it takes for important policy changes to occur.
Our Form
We have written an algorithm that can separate comments by asterisk so that collaborators no longer need to write their comments as a bulleted list in a separate word document. Publications officers were finding that many comments would be submitted incorrectly because collaborators would not follow the directions listed.
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In addition to this, we have added a self reported priority ranking question so that officers have a better idea of which comments to address and how important they might be.
Previous Form
For comparison, this was the ​form before. The previous Google sheet script could only separate by bullet points which required collaborators to create bulleted lists in a separate word document.
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The Solution
Our Website
Instead of exporting comments from the form site and manually organizing each entry we decided to make a website that can be a one stop shop location for all things comment triaging. We have created a platform that consolidates multiple applications into a central location that utilizes automatic tagging and intelligent triaging to process large sets of comment data quickly. We have also changed the form structure in order to make submitting comments easier and clearer for collaborators.
Clicking the "Export" button opens a cleaned Google sheet in a new tab.
Our website pulls real time data about when a new entry has been made for any given form. We have built a cleaning algorithm that separates comments into respective cells automatically, which makes it so that publications officers do not have to look for every bullet point and separate them manually.
Project Officer Assignments
Our website provides the capability to store the Project Officer assignment to a Cause/Cause Grouping. The information stored here allows our website to export the comment data with the Project Officer automatically assigned to it. This information can be edited at any point and the changes will be reflected in the next export.
Word Bank
In order to automate the triaging of comment categories, we have created a word bank that will help to recognize specific words and assign them a category.
Our Form Redesign
We have written an algorithm that can separate comments by asterisk so that collaborators no longer need to write their comments as a bulleted list in a separate word document. Publications officers were finding that many comments would be submitted incorrectly because collaborators would not follow the directions listed.
​
In addition to this, we have added a self reported priority ranking question so that officers have a better idea of which comments to address and how important they might be.
Previous Form
For comparison, this was the ​form before. The previous Google sheet script could only separate by bullet points which required collaborators to create bulleted lists in a separate word document.
​
Target Users
IHME Officers
The website is intended for internal use by IHME's publications officers.
Collaborators
Our redesigned form template will help collaborators submit forms faster because they no longer need to write their comments as a separate document in order to copy and paste their answers back into the form.
Project Benefits
With our website, IHME staff no longer need to look through thousands of comments and categorize every single cell manually. They have now a magic button that, with just a click, reduces weeks of work into 30 seconds​. Our website's sheets will have greater accuracy as it reduces the chance for any human error. With this ample extra time and reduced stress, IHME publications officers can spend more time corresponding with collaborators and strengthening the relationships between them and IHME.