Library Guides: Public Health: Images, Infographics, & Data Visualization

Creating Infographics or Community Health Maps

You have the data, now you just need that perfect infographic to show off your results. Try one of these free resources to help make your presentation more visually appealing.

The only downside to “free” is that the data you upload etc. may no longer be private - once you upload your dataset from excel etc. your research or designs may be in the public domain. Be sure to read the fine print so you understand what "free" really means if you have concerns about how your data might be used.

Epi Info
Epi Info™ is a public domain suite of software tools designed for the global community of public health practitioners and researchers. It provides for easy data entry form and database construction, a customized data entry experience, and data analyses with epidemiologic statistics, maps, and graphs for public health professionals who may lack an information technology background.
Google Drive – Fusion Tables
Fusion Tables is an experimental data visualization web application to gather, visualize, and share data tables. You can upload your own data, or find public data to incorporate into your research.
Keshif
Open source tool that "rapidly turns your data into a beautiful, effective, dynamic interface on your web browser."
QGIS - Open Source Desktop GIS
"QGIS is a user friendly Open Source Geographic Information System (GIS) licensed under the GNU General Public License. QGIS is an official project of the Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo). It runs on Linux, Unix, Mac OSX, Windows and Android and supports numerous vector, raster, and database formats and functionalities." Learn how to use QGIS 3.X through A Workbook for Classroom or Independent StudyThe book includes: Lab exercises; Challenge exercises; All data, discussion questions, and solutions.
Tableau Public
"Tableau Public is a free service that lets anyone publish interactive data to the web. Once on the web, anyone can interact with the data, download it, or create their own visualizations of it. No programming skills are required. Everything saved to Tableau Public is accessible by anyone on the internet, so be sure to post only with publicly available (and appropriate) data."

Can I Use that Picture?

Audio, graphics, and video can be found in multiple places! This guide is not meant to be exhaustive, but to highlights a few key resources that we find helpful. Please let us know what your media needs are for your class, presentation, or a clinical setting, and we can provide more specific guidance on which DMU resource would be most appropriate for your needs.

Can I Use that Picture? The Terms, Laws, and Ethics for Using Copyrighted Images

Free Images Resources

Public Health Image Library (PHIL)
Most of the images in the collection are in the public domain and are thus free of any copyright restrictions. If you look directly beneath the image you will see a fair use statement that tells you if the image is public domain or copyright protected. Permission is not required for public domain images, but we do ask that you credit the original institution and contributor, when known, whenever the image is used in any publicly distributed media. If the image is copyright protected, you will have to contact the content provider to obtain usage permission. PHIL does not have the authority to grant usage for any copyrighted images in the library. If you have difficulty contacting a content provider, we may be able to help, but we cannot act on their behalf.

Open-I (Open Access Biomedical Images)
"OpenI is the service of the National Library of Medicine that enables search and retrieval of abstracts and images (including charts, graphs, clinical images, etc.) from the open source literature, and biomedical image collections. OpenI provides access to over 1.6 million images from about 580,000 PubMedCentral articles and 7,470 chest x-rays with 3,955 radiology reports"
ID Images (eMicrobes: A Digital Library for Learning Infectious Diseases)
The goal of this site is to present images of interesting and instructive Infectious Disease cases to healthcare trainees and professionals for educational purposes. The site is a result of a collaboration among the Infectious Diseases Divisions of the Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women's Hospital and the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT and Harvard. Cases and images within ID images are described using terms from the NLM's Medical Subject Headings. You will need to register for a free account to use the site. Please see the Permissions and Copyright section to learn how to ethically use material from this resource.

Library Databases with Images, Videos, or Audio Content for Public Health

Image based content is located in numerous library resources. A few recommended places are listed here. Please talk to a librarian for assistance locating media content for your research or project.

ClinicalKey This link opens in a new window
Learn about mobile access - Clinical Key combines a broad range of resources within a single interface: Full-text journals & books; Medline citations; point-of-care clinical overviews; Procedure and surgical videos; Clinical Pharmacology drug monographs.

LWW Health Library
The library has an ebook collection with Lippincott, Williams and Wilkins. After you search for your word or phrase, limit your results by clicking “image” under the Media category. Multimedia content is derived from the ebook collection which includes materials on: anatomy, osteopathic medicine, pathology, pathology/physiology, physical examination, and more. Switch collections by choosing the "More Collections" menu in the top right hand corner.

UpToDate This link opens in a new window
Learn about mobile access | UpToDate® is a physician-authored clinical decision support resource that assists clinicians with point-of-care decisions. Includes easy-to-search graphics and a drug database and drug interactions tool (in partnership with Lexicomp®).
VisualDX This link opens in a new window
Learn about mobile access | Searchable by symptoms, signs, and patient factors, VisualDx includes more than 3,000 diagnoses and over 41,000 images, providing a customized, graphical differential diagnosis of an infectious, immunologic, metabolic, nutritional, psychiatric, or genetic disease.