The surveillance of infectious diseases: the experience of Open Data COVID

Objectives: to describe Open Data Covid, an online applic-ation dedicated to the pandemic and the health of the pop-ulation of the province of L'Aquila (Abruzzo Region, South-ern Italy), created following the health emergency in Italy and worldwide.Design: Open Data Covid is the result of a multidisciplin-ary study group including University of L'Aquila, Local Health Unit 1 Abruzzo, and Gran Sasso Science Institute. In the first phase, the information to be shown was identified and made available based on the pandemic national reports to obtain comparable results. The health databases containing the in-formation needed to power the application were selected. This information was then evaluated, cleaned, and integ-rated.Setting and participants: data derived from administrative data flow of the Local Health Unit.Main outcomes measures: the final application collects individual data from confirmed laboratory cases of SARS-CoV-2 infection and collects information about their resid-ence, laboratory diagnosis, hospitalization, clinical status, risk factors and outcome.Results: the application was structured in three sections. The first section shows data about the COVID-19 pandemic; the second contains information about the assisted popula-tion; the third contains documentation and access to pub-lic Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) for accessing source data. Consulting the application data is simple and intuitive: through graphs and infographics, the temporal and geographical course of the pandemic can be known.Conclusions: the Open Data Covid application is a response to the information gaps highlighted by the COVID-19 pan-demic. Its creation demonstrated that is possible to build an online application useful both for the population and for pub-lic health professionals.