Simplicity, transparency and trust – essential in health data reporting

New research by HealthPros (a training network for healthcare professionals) and the World Health Organization (Europe) shows that countries are facing challenges in the way Covid-19 information is presented and disseminated. While visual and dynamic displays of key data – COVID-19 dashboards – were rapidly developed in the early months of the pandemic, countries faced issues related to ease of use, open data use, transparency and trust.

The new publication shows how much the Covid-19 dashboards developed early in the pandemic can achieve with limited resources and high urgency. He also pointed out that it is important to monitor the spread of “wrong information that can cause harm”. The publication is based on in-depth interviews with national Covid-19 dashboard teams in the 33 countries surveyed.

Urgency, high workloads, limited manpower, data and privacy restrictions, and public scrutiny were all challenges dashboards faced in early 2020. It’s a key challenge reported by other observers, the study says. As one expert recalls: “While we were building the plane, we were flying it”.

The experiences of Covid-19 show the need for smart investments

Dashboards have been used by many jurisdictions to automatically display data such as Covid-19 cases, hospitalizations, deaths and geographic locations in a chronological format.

“What we saw in the early stages of the epidemic was the strong political commitment, support from the profession and the private sector to find ways to understand and track this new disease,” said Dr. David Novillo-Ortiz. Regional Advisor for Data and Digital Health at WHO/Europe.

Solve existing gaps

Although the experience of COVID-19 highlights successful cooperation at the international level – for example between the WHO, the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) and Eurostat – the study shows gaps in cross-country cooperation on dashboards and limitations. Transnational data exchanges.

Based at the University Medical Center of Amsterdam, the research team included researchers from HealthPros and health information experts from WHO/Europe. He conducted interviews with members of the dashboard in 11 languages ​​covering 31 member countries of the WHO European Region. Descriptive coding and thematic analysis as well as a validation workshop were used to reach the conclusions.