Sharing datasets of the COVID-19 epidemic in the Czech Republic

Abstract

At the time of the COVID-19 pandemic, providing access to data (properly optimised regarding personal data protection) plays a crucial role in providing the general public and media with up-to-date information. Open datasets also represent one of the means for evaluation of the pandemic on a global level. The primary aim of this paper is to describe the methodological and technical framework for publishing datasets describing characteristics related to the COVID-19 epidemic in the Czech Republic (epidemiology, hospital-based care, vaccination), including the use of these datasets in practice. Practical aspects and experience with data sharing are discussed. As a reaction to the epidemic situation, a new portal COVID-19: Current Situation in the Czech Republic (https://onemocneni-aktualne.mzcr.cz/covid-19) was developed and launched in March 2020 to provide a fully-fledged and trustworthy source of information for the public and media. The portal also contains a section for the publication of (i) public open datasets available for download in CSV and JSON formats and (ii) authorised-access-only section where the authorised persons can (through an online generated token) safely visualise or download regional datasets with aggregated data at the level of the individual municipalities and regions. The data are also provided to the local open data catalogue (covering only open data on healthcare, provided by the Ministry of Health) and to the National Catalogue of Open Data (covering all open data sets, provided by various authorities/publishers, and harversting all data from local catalogues). The datasets have been published in various authentication regimes and widely used by general public, scientists, public authorities and decision-makers. The total number of API calls since its launch in March 2020 to 15 December 2020 exceeded 13 million. The datasets have been adopted as an official and guaranteed source for outputs of third parties, including public authorities, non-governmental organisations, scientists and online news portals. Datasets currently published as open data meet the 3-star open data requirements, which makes them machine-readable and facilitates their further usage without restrictions. This is essential for making the data more easily understandable and usable for data consumers. In conjunction with the strategy of the MH in the field of data opening, additional datasets meeting the already implemented standards will be also released, both on COVID-19 related and unrelated topics.

Advancing patient safety governance in the COVID-19 response

“…The Czech Republic developed a special reporting system for evaluation of impact of COVID 19 epidemic on healthcare systems. Data from this reporting system has been used to support data-based decision making (Komenda et al, 2020[43]; Komenda et al, 2022[44]; Komenda et al, 2022 [45]), analyses on risk factors of severe COVID-19 (Jarkovsky et al, 2021 [46]) and examine vaccine effectiveness (Šmíd et al, 2022 [47]) (Berec et al, 2022[48]).…”

The role of open government data and co-creation in crisis management: Initial conceptual propositions from the COVID-19 pandemic

“…Though actual OGD does exist in these portals, many other relevant datasets related to COVID-19 required permission to access. The datasets that were released for reuse and, therefore available openly for co-creation, were those describing characteristics related to epidemiology, hospital-based care, and vaccination (Komenda et al, 2022). Due to the access restrictions set on several datasets, most services built in the Czech Republic that relied on OGD (and additional restricted datasets) were developed by public authorities or academics, limiting the potential opportunities for widespread co-creation.…”

Possible effect of OAS1 and TMPRSS6 but not DPP4 and ZNF335 polymorphisms on COVID-19 severity in the Czech population

“…Severe acute respiratory syndrome RNA coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection occurred at the end of 2019 and spread rapidly from Wuhan, China, around the world. COVID-19 (COrona VIrus Disease) has so far (September 2023) affected over 760,000,000 people and is associated with almost 7,000,000 deaths*, with the Czech population being among the most affected worldwide (1,2).…”