What we built

For the Northern Dutch Network 'Medicine Residues in Water' of the Healthy Aging Network (HANNN), we built a visualization dashboard. In this dashboard, we visualized the prescribing behavior of general practitioners and the medicine residues in the sewage water in two neighborhoods in Drachten.

The challenge

Every year, more than 190 tons of pharmaceutical residues end up in our water. This has negative consequences for the environment, flora and fauna, and drinking water. Due to climate change and a quickly aging population, this problem is expected to worsen in the coming years. To address this challenge from various perspectives, the Network Medicine Residues in Water Northern Netherlands was established. This network comprises 46 stakeholders from healthcare, water sector, government, research institutions, and technology sector. Researchable has been part of this network since 2022. Our role in the network was to investigate how data can provide novel insights into this challenge. To achieve this, we focused on two neighborhoods in Drachten: a so-called 'bloeizone,' where there is a strong emphasis on a healthy lifestyle, and a neighborhood where this is not yet the case. By comparing the two neighborhoods on prescribing behavior and medicine residues in water, we hope to gain more insight in how the issue of medicine residues could be addressed.

The solution

Researchable has developed an interactive dashboard to visualize the prescription data of general practitioners in the two neighborhoods, as well as the detected medicine residues in the sewage water within these areas. The concentration of around thirty pharmaceutical residues was measured in the sewage water. The list included medications with a greater impact on the environment and those used against lifestyle-related diseases.

The dashboard is depicted below. It provides insight into how often each type of medication is prescribed. It also shows how this varies by year, age group, and gender.

We also visualized to what extent the prescribed medications were found in sewage water.

Next steps

It is evident that visualizing prescribing behavior and medicine residues in water can provide valuable insights into the potential environmental impact of our medication usage. Our dashboard can be applied to new datasets to make prescribing behavior visible for more general practitioners and healthcare institutions.