Lookout

A platform for unifying and sharing data for outbreak response, public health, and research. Powerful enough to handle millions of records, simple enough that it can be set up and deployed by anyone. Connect data from multiple sources—clinical, genomic, wastewater, geography—and filter through it instantly. Refined by years of experience working with experts on deployments around the world.

1.

Use your existing data sources

Lookout works with any health data you already have.

2.

Write a Connector

A Connector retrieves your data and formats it into a records.json file. Build off our examples or write a custom one for your infrastructure.

3.

Configure your site

Set up any number of pathogens, charts, and demographic data. Maintain on your own.

config.json Docs

Configure your site’s pathogens, time scales, human-readable labels, etc.

records.json Docs

A simple format for complex health data

layout.json Docs

Customize your site to display any kinds of charts

lookout.js The Lookout code

4.

Deploy anywhere

Lookout sites are static bundles, so you can host one anywhere. Keep it login-protected on your own server infrastructure, or make it public.

Why use Lookout?

Over the past 6+ years, we’ve built similar platforms for various audiences, working directly with different domain experts. All of those lessons have informed the design of Lookout.

1. Run on your own, anywhere

   Lookout is controlled by a small number of scripts and .json files that you write, so you can edit and update the site over time, on your own. It creates static bundles you can run on your own server, and it’s built to use minimal resources and work well in conditions with limited internet stability.

2. Tie together multiple sources of data

   Health data comes from various sources and takes many forms: epidemiological, clinical, genomic, wastewater, and more. Each only paints part of the picture. Yet they’re often siloed into separate dashboards and workflows. Lookout can pull in data from multiple sources and display that data in a single view, allowing you to see the connections between various kinds of data, and instantly filter down to any subset.

3. Share your data across audiences

   It’s easy to set up multiple Lookout views to display the same data in different formats for different audiences. For example, you can have an high-level overview dashboard for the public, while allowing researchers access to detailed views. Lookout can also export customizable PDFs and images, so you can share findings through your existing workflows: emails, decks, and more.

4. Highlight important information

   Lookout makes sprawling health data easy to read at a glance. Each chart in Lookout highlights its most important information upfront, and you can hover and click on them to drill down to every detail. If you’re tracking multiple pathogens, you can set per-pathogen alert thresholds to flag important developments.

There are many other features Lookout supports, which you can read about more in these docs, but we think the easiest way to understand Lookout is to spin up a demo site, which only takes a few minutes.