World Health Day: Open Data initiatives in healthcare
Today is World Health Day
[https://www.who.int/campaigns/75-years-of-improving-public-health]!
This day is organised by the World Health Organisation
[https://www.who.int/about] (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
[https://www.who.int/news/item/17-11-2021-global-individual-patient-data-platform-for-drug-resistant-tuberculosis-treatment]
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
[https://medicat.io/], a use case
[https://data.europa.eu/en/publications/use-cases/medicatio-0] from
the Use Case Observatory
[https://data.europa.eu/sites/default/files/report/The_Use_Case_Observatory_Volume_I_0.pdf].
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
[https://data.europa.eu/en/news-events/news/what-european-cancer-imaging-initiative]
or data story on the value of health data
[https://data.europa.eu/en/publications/datastories/value-health-data-and-its-role-europe].

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or subscribe to our newsletter [https://data.europa.eu/en/newsletter].

Publication Date/Time
2023-04-07T08:00:00+00:00
Open data supports research and innovations to improve healthcare