The Health Care Cost Institute (HCCI) was thrilled to make the shortlist for the Kantar Information is Beautiful Awards in the Humanitarian category. Information is Beautiful celebrates excellence and beauty in data visualizations, infographics, interactives, and information art – and the work it features serves as inspiration to HCCI. Over the past year, with support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the HCCI team developed a set of measures tracking the drivers of health care spending in many local commercial markets across the U.S. – collectively referred to as the Healthy Marketplace Index (HMI).

One of HCCI's key goals for the HMI was to display the data in an easily interpretable, widely usable, and visually appealing manner. With the help of our friends at The DataFace, HCCI produced a number of interactive reports that allow readers to explore their metro area's health care prices, utilization patterns, and hospital market concentration to other metro areas nationwide and over time.

HMI's lead authors – William Johnson and Kevin Kennedy – traveled to the 8^th Annual Information is Beautiful Awards ceremony at the historic LSO St. Luke's church in London, England on November 20^th. The event featured highlight videos showcasing all shortlistees' work from each category and provided a great opportunity to meet, talk, and collaborate with other data viz enthusiasts. The event even had cookies decorated with pictures from each shortlisted project! ​​

This was the third time HMI was recognized for innovation and excellence. Previously, HMI content won the 2018 National Association of Health Data Organizations (NAHDO) Infographic Contest and was a finalist for the 2019 National Institute for Health Care Management Foundation (NICHM) Digital Media Award.

Check out the Healthy Marketplace Index interactive reports and explore how your area stacks up!