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Need to strengthen data and Information systems during COVID-19

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(@ashishjoshi)
Posts: 121
Reputable Member Admin
Topic starter
 

There is an urgent need globally to strengthen health data and information systems. Timely, credible, reliable, and actionable data are key to ensuring that political decisions are data driven and facilitate understanding, monitoring, and forecasting. Each country needs to develop or enhance a national data governance plan that includes a “clear coordination mechanism, well-defined and documented data processes (manual or electronic), the exchange of data, and a data culture to empower users”.

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A call to strengthen data in response to COVID-19 and beyond

This highlights the importance for countries globally to establish a global data sharing and data governance pact that facilitates data sharing, and knowledge transfer to address this evolving and future pandemic.

We are eager to know more about your perspectives on how lack of data sharing during this evolving COVID-19 pandemic is affecting the decision-making.

This topic was modified 3 years ago 2 times by ashishjoshi
 
Posted : June 2, 2021 7:34 am
Sudar Jyothi G, mandasor, Yachna and 8 people reacted
(@trushar-parmar)
Posts: 14
Eminent Member
 

During the current pandemic, there has been a massive publication of articles, and many journals have released them for open access. However, the deposit of supplementary material and data in repositories amounts to only 13.6%, and reusable data reaches just 1.2%. From these percentages, it can be deduced that data sharing is not a common practice, even in health emergencies, such as the present one. Therefore, greater awareness and more efficient infrastructures are necessary. High-impact generalist journals have accounted for a large share of global publishing. The topics most often covered are related to epidemiological and public health concepts, genetics, virology and respiratory diseases, such as pneumonia. However, it is essential to interpret these data with caution and to follow the evolution of publications and their funding in the coming months.

 

Further read: //link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11192-021-03971-6

 
Posted : June 2, 2021 9:02 am
digjeetkaur and M reacted
(@shruti-sharma)
Posts: 29
Eminent Member
 

Data are key for strong result-oriented research institutions.  Data also inform planning and policy decisions by governments. During the other outbreak like Ebola and Zika, the stakeholders and researchers shared their data, which enabled many published epidemiological studies to be produced from those data, and that speeded up the investigation and control of such infections. 

Such actions in the case of covid 19 can boost up the strategy to develop a solution.

The has been an ample amount of coronavirus research on the independent coronavirus data with different organizations. but inconsistent data sharing can hinder global efforts to tackle the outbreak. 

There should be one platform, which can track all the data in one place, so the discrepancies can be addressed. and quality and reliability of data can be improved  

 
Posted : June 2, 2021 9:45 am
digjeetkaur reacted
(@bhavya)
Posts: 24
Eminent Member
 

This pandemic has caused an great impact on hospital systems, businesses, schools, and the economy. Telemedicine, telework, and online education become essential to help society slow down the spread of the coronavirus. The pandemic has generated a huge demand for efforts to use innovative technologies to cope with damage from COVID-19 on our life.

During the current pandemic, there has been a massive publication of articles, and many journals have released them for open access. However, the deposit of supplementary material and data in repositories amounts to only 13.6%, and reusable data reaches just 1.2%. From these percentages, it can be deduced that data sharing is not a common practice, even in health emergencies, such as the present one. Therefore, greater awareness and more efficient infrastructures are necessary.

 

Interesting Read: //link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11192-021-03971-6

 
Posted : June 2, 2021 12:49 pm
(@shivanigarg)
Posts: 1
New Member
 

After seeing the global devastation wrought by the epidemic, it is imperative that immediate and significant decisions be made to change and enhance the health data and information system. The government should implement new policies in the health care system, and the public's attitude toward technology should improve. The use of AI and IT in the healthcare system should be stressed more to make it more efficient, rapid, and consistent. More study data should be provided to aid in the early stages of the research. There should be a single platform from which all data can be retrieved quickly and conveniently. If such technology is integrated into the infrastructure, researchers, investigators, epidemiologists, and any other health faculty members should be taught the same approach and technology to make it workable.

When the entire world is on the path to growth, the health data and information system must also be established in order to readily combat any future pandemics.

 
Posted : June 2, 2021 1:04 pm
digjeetkaur reacted
(@monika-kaushik)
Posts: 1
New Member
 

As the part of commitment to strengthening health information system and improving health especially in this pandemic time covid 19 we need for timely and reliable data to drive the strategic health action.Due to lack of gathering health data we need to use the data for effective health action and emergency response.During this pandemic time we need reliable data and it is the best way to coordinate response effort and improve health in all aspects.

 
Posted : June 2, 2021 3:39 pm
 M
(@m)
Posts: 11
Active Member
 

 

During this COVID 19 era, data sharing is a very important aspect to consider. Lack of data sharing can affect the rollout of vaccinations, treatment strategies. Recently the Pune Platform for Covid-19 Response (PPCR) team recommended the govt to share data of the COVID 19 patient's recovery time, and mortality associated with co-morbidities. Scientists say that sharing more data would yield a holistic picture of the COVID 19 pandemic and help in evidence-based decision-making. The concerns about privacy and confidentiality should be solved by taking adequate safety measures such as data encryption. Also, a universal platform should be developed for data sharing and this could be helpful in the future for conducting research.

 

 
Posted : June 2, 2021 5:46 pm
(@nazish03rahat)
Posts: 2
New Member
 

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the urgent need for timely and reliable data to drive strategic health action. Too many countries still lack the infrastructure to routinely gather health data and the analytical capacity to use these data for effective health actions and emergency response. “Countries must be able to measure progress to make progress,” said WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.  Accurate health data are necessary to understand specific country needs to improve health and save lives. Data also helps direct scarce resources to where they are needed most. The fast spread and pervasive impact of COVID-19, require governments to provide effective, timely, and inclusive responses to manage the pandemic. In addition to traditional data sources and data analytics tools, governments rely on open data and big data analytics in responding to COVID-19.

      With a more prominent role of open data and big data analytics in addressing challenges of COVID-19, there have been increasing concerns about data privacy and security, which also put in jeopardy public trust in data collection, use, and dissemination by government and relevant non-government stakeholders such as the private sector.

      According to a recent survey by IBM Policy Lab, almost half (49%) of the respondents across the US and the EU are more concerned about privacy due to contact tracing during the COVID-19 pandemic. This has become more complex due to the increase in data partnerships between government institutions and the private sector, such as telecommunications and credit card companies, for contact tracing and social distancing. The general public has expressed concerns about the unauthorized access and misuse of personal data, as such access is often conducted without consent. Such increasing public concerns about data privacy and security concerning the use of open data and big data analytics for addressing COVID-19, which is often linked with data partnerships between government institutions and the private sector, have led to calls for strengthening data governance.

 
Posted : June 2, 2021 8:44 pm
(@isha09)
Posts: 30
Eminent Member
 

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted globally the significance of sharing and transparency of data in decision-making and timely implementation of control measures for public health. The integration and analysis of multiple heterogeneous data is considered to be highly efficient in generating an evidence-based response by taking policy action in real time. The statistics of public health and health services across countries is incoherent. Therefore, there is a big need for strengthening data and information sharing systems.

The ongoing pandemic situation has revealed why keeping a continuous record of cases, number of fatalities and recoveries is essential. The mathematical modelling of infectious diseases in order to predict the timings of attacks, reaching at peak, and flattening of curve becomes fruitful only when data sharing is done in a proper way. Not only this but it is also critical to ascertain underlying causes, comorbidities that can impact the outcome of the disease, disease severity, virus genetic makeup etc. Data related to such records along with background information can prove beneficial in measuring preparedness, risk management ability, and mitigation responses to identify, manage, and care for new cases.

The open access system for data enables to improve forecasting, study the spread of disease, magnitude of cases and their outcomes such as fatalities or recovery, and the transmissibility of the virus. Geographical mapping of mutants will allow to understand viral spread and explain recoveries or deaths in a containment zones. Moreover, vaccination programme and drug-treatment strategies can be shaped up using such statistical estimates. The use of data standards assures consistency, data security, confidentiality and less errors. This needs a systemic infrastructure ensuring data encryption while preserving anonymity and ensuring privacy. In the end, a standardised digital health data sharing mechanism is required worldwide to smoothen up the process for a swift decision making process.

 
Posted : June 2, 2021 11:41 pm
(@shrutis)
Posts: 6
Active Member
 

Each country should focus on establishing a national database and coordination system to then compare it with those of other countries globally. This will help in better identification of the potential problems that may arise and which strategy must be used to tackle the public health problem. It will help set measures in place for interventions in emergency and prevention of disasters. The mechanism for this database must be well laid out, to ensure information is continuously updated while monitoring the conditions through time. This will ensure the most verified and recent data is at the hands of the decision makers and researchers. COVID 19 is one of the many examples where this can play a key role in handling the surge of cases in the country along with newer novel and older modified versions of infections and diseases.

The data collected from the citizens via digital tracing in several countries can be used to monitor the surge of covid 19 cases but people fear the misuse of their personal information. The UN Secretary-General has said that the human rights must be of central importance while sharing information related to COVID-19, maintaining standards with regard to data collection and its distribution considering the UN Personal Data Protection and Privacy Principles.

The data shared must be done so in a way that it abides by the standards of ethics and right to privacy and yet promote the sharing for the right purpose i.e., promotion of health among all globally. This can only be achieved by clearly defining the rules with countries globally for its use and propagation, in order to protect the human rights of the people whose information is being shared, the owners compiling it and users.

//www.who.int/news/item/19-11-2020-joint-statement-on-data-protection-and-privacy-in-the-covid-19-response

 
Posted : June 3, 2021 1:40 pm
(@rahulshrivastava)
Posts: 16
Active Member
 

Data is a vital component in augmenting the government, healthcare organisations and other sectors battle the Covid-19 pandemic, but it is very important to remember that not all data is accurate and datasets are often incomplete. On exploring in some of the known sources, there found to be lack of alignment among the players fighting the spread of the coronavirus what is being measured, reported and compared. And all of that is contributing to uncertainty and inconsistency in the data, and that is absolutely creating mistrust and fear. In this regard, efforts that rely on coronavirus self-reporting is also creating an inaccurate data pool because people may not tell the truth or they might misinterpret the sign and symptoms with ILI infection.

 
Posted : June 3, 2021 3:24 pm
(@meghakapoor)
Posts: 1
New Member
 

Lack of reliable, accurate, credible health data during the era of pandemic is of grave concern. Therefore, need of the hour is an undisrupted health data and information system for better healthcare policy decisions. Digitized central health data can be detrimental in the prevention, early screening & management of the lethal disease.

In the last few weeks, we as a country witnessed acute shortage of human resources and medical infrastructure. There was sudden, huge surge in the no. of COVID-19 infections. Appropriate health data and information will aid in better allocation of these resources to the patients. It is also crucial to assimilate data regarding the individuals with pre-existing co-morbidities having COVID-19 to reduce the burden of co-infection. Strengthening the research is necessitated by the fact that individuals with various co-morbidities have high mortality risk after being infected.

The current COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of strengthened data and information system to effectively prevent and control future public health emergencies through better policy decision & resource management.

 
Posted : June 3, 2021 4:27 pm
(@akankshachauhan)
Posts: 1
New Member
 

Covid 19 has had an enormous impact on the world. It has affected both the mental and physical aspects of a persons life. In all this chaos there has been alot of misinformation circulating around, which is a consequence of no proper reliable data being available. There is fabrication of data on various websites for their own gains, which is highly unethical. It is the populations right to be told about the actual numbers, the correct data, so that they can make a decision for themselves and have some faith in the system. 

The health data and information systems need to be more transparent and progressive. Strengthening of the IT systems and the proper use of AI could play a major role in this. 

A nation can progress only when it is on the same page together through trust and faith. Inorder to maintain that trust and faith of the population and to provide them with better services and infrastructure, a very transparent functioning of the health data and information systems is required.

 
Posted : June 3, 2021 4:33 pm
(@saimadhuri-rangaraju)
Posts: 6
Active Member
 

Health data and information systems are very important backbone for any health system all over the world. Globalization again plays a very important role in exchange of information between countries during these pandemic times .The exchange of information and data sharing definitely brings a good change in how we deal with any kind of emergency situations like for example now ongoing pandemic crisis. Health data and information systems must include robust research based evidences only. Tele health services are widely used in these pandemic times and it created certain kind of awareness in the public regarding the pandemic. And also government official website like WHO,CDC are also providing the health data regarding covid-19 morbidity and mortality trends all over the world and also providing the protocol to be followed for preventing the covid-19 pandemic.

It is  because of the availability of the information that one country got affected with second wave of covid-19,the other country got alert and travel restrictions are imposed such that at least in that way one can reduce the transmission of the infection .Lack of health data in this pandemic times may make the situation even worse as one won't be able to know the fatal effects of covid-19.So health data and information systems are biggest asset and every country must try to strengthen it, in this emergency pandemic situations.

Reference for more information on role of health technology in global health emergencies like covid-19 pandemic:  //www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7388036/  

 

 
Posted : June 3, 2021 9:52 pm
(@harpreet)
Posts: 60
Trusted Member
 

Evidence based research and decision making are largely dependent upon access to large and multidimensional data. The benefits of data sharing have been previously established (1). With the ongoing pandemic it has been established that timely, accurate and transparent information sharing is vital as an outbreak response. This paper talks about International Health Regulations (IHR) which is an international legal agreement that guides response to health emergencies via WHO. Adherence to IHR will facilitate the response to pandemic, however, formal mechanism, trust building measures and transparency is required in recognizing and mitigating the potential and perceived risks of information sharing (2).

  1. //link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11192-021-03971-6
  2. //globalizationandhealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12992-021-00673-9
 
Posted : June 7, 2021 6:28 pm
Mirzaadil reacted
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