World Health Day: Open Data initiatives in healthcare

Today is World Health Day! This day is organised by the World Health Organisation (WHO) to promote health, keep the world safe and serve the vulnerable. Open data benefits the healthcare sector in many ways, for example, through more precise and faster decision making, aid early disease detection, improve patient documentation and data sharing and support research on cures and medicines.

Over the years, open data has been used in a wide range of healthcare initiatives, such as the publicly accessible global individual patient data (IPD) platform for drug-resistant tuberculosis treatment. This platform was created by the WHO to increase our knowledge base, by gathering outcomes of over 10,000 drug-resistant tuberculosis patients. The platform’s aim is to enhance research on new medicines or the use of repurposed medicines and improve patient outcomes for this disease.

Another open data initiative in healthcare is Medicatio, a use case from the Use Case Observatory. It is a medicine database combining data to analyse, cross-reference and compare the elements of drugs and highlight important information on the consumption of medication to improve understanding and appropriate usage. The aim is to improve the accessibility of public information related to each drug available in France and create awareness on drug consumption.

Overall, the use of open data in healthcare has proven to be a valuable tool and continues to be in line with the objectives of the WHO and what World Health Day stands for. With the increased adoption of open data initiatives, further innovations and advancements can be expected in the healthcare sector.

Do you want to get inspired by more open data initiatives in the healthcare sector? Read our news piece on the European Cancer Imaging Initiative or data story on the value of health data.

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