Unlocking linked real-world data presents opportunities to improve public health

The COVID-19 pandemic has surfaced the potential and risks of linked real world datasets to accelerate and produce new improvements in public health.

In this post, originally published by LSE, Matthew Franklin, Dan Howden, Suzanne Mason, Tony Stone and Monica Jones outline the opportunities and challenges of using real world data as part of the 'Unlocking data to inform public health policy and practice' project.

Highlighting the ethical and practical challenges of accessing this data, they argue that investing in and developing trust across those involved in the formation of real world data is critical to its effective use

Photo from Flickr: Marco Verch Professional Photographer (CC by 2.0)

HEDS Website of the month for April - COVID19 Data Portal

This month's website of the month will hopefully prove incredibly useful for those involved in the work going on to fight COVID19 

https://www.covid19dataportal.org/

The COVID19 Data Portal says: The COVID-19 Data Portal was launched in April 2020 to bring together relevant datasets for sharing and analysis in an effort to accelerate coronavirus research. It enables researchers to upload, access and analyse COVID-19 related reference data and specialist datasets as part of the wider European COVID-19 Data Platform.

https://www.covid19dataportal.org/

More information taken from the COVID19 Data Portal

The aim of the COVID-19 Data Portal is to facilitate data sharing and analysis, and to accelerate coronavirus research

An unprecedented number of scientific efforts are taking place worldwide in order to help combat the new coronavirus epidemic (COVID-19). One of the biggest challenges in this fast-moving situation is to share data and findings in a coordinated way, in order to understand the disease and to develop treatments and vaccines.

To address this challenge, EMBL-EBI and partners have has set up the COVID-19 Data Portal, which will bring together relevant datasets submitted to EMBL-EBI and other major centres for biomedical data. The aim is to facilitate data sharing and analysis, and to accelerate coronavirus research.

The COVID-19 Data Portal will enable researchers to upload, access and analyse COVID-19 related reference data and specialist datasets.

The COVID-19 Data Portal will be the primary entry point into the functions of a wider project, the European COVID-19 Data Platform.

Rapid and open sharing of data greatly accelerates research and discovery, which is essential to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. The European Commission and EMBL’s European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI), together with EU Member States and research partners such as ELIXIR, are deploying a dedicated European COVID-19 Data Platform that will enable the rapid collection and comprehensive data sharing of available research data from different sources for the European and global research communities. This joint effort is a priority pilot to realise the objectives of the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC).

The European COVID-19 Data Platform will consist of two connected components:

• SARS-CoV-2 Data Hubs, which will organise the flow of SARS-CoV-2 outbreak sequence data and provide comprehensive open data sharing for the European and global research communities.
  Read more about the Data Hubs >
• COVID-19 Data Portal, which will bring together and continuously update relevant COVID-19 datasets and tools, will host sequence data sharing and will facilitate access to other SARS-CoV-2 resources.

New HEDS Discussion Paper - Explaining national differences in the mortality of Covid-19: Individual patient simulation model to investigate the effects of testing policy and other factors on apparent mortality

Explaining national differences in the mortality of Covid-19: Individual patient simulation model to investigate the effects of testing policy and other factors on apparent mortality

Jonathan A Michaels, Matt D Stevenson

Abstract

Professor Jonathan Michaels    

There has been extensive speculation on the apparent differences in mortality between countries reporting on the confirmed cases and deaths due to Covid-19. A number of explanations have been suggested, but there is no clear evidence about how apparent fatality rates may be expected to vary with the different testing regimes, admission policies and other variables. An individual patient simulation model was developed to address this question. Parameters and sensitivity analysis based upon recent international data sources for Covid-19 and results were averaged over 100 iterations for a simulated cohort of over 500,000 patients.

Different testing regimes for Covid-19 were considered; testing admitted patients only, various rates of community testing of symptomatic cases and active contact-tracing and screening.

Professor Matt
Stevenson

In the base case analysis, apparent mortality ranged from 10.5% under a policy of testing only admitted patients to 0.4% with intensive contact tracing and community testing. These findings were sensitive to assumptions regarding admission rates and the rate of spread, with more selective admission policies and suppression of spread increasing the apparent mortality and the potential for apparent mortality rates to exceed 18% under some circumstances. Under all scenarios the proportion of patients tested in the community had the greatest impact on apparent mortality.

Whilst differences in mortality due to health service and demographic factors cannot be excluded, the current international differences in reported mortality are all consistent with differences in practice regarding screening, community testing and admission policies.

Download the Discussion Paper here