EU4Digital: eHealth network meeting highlights COVID-19 data information responses in Eastern partner countries

The EU4Digital eHealth Network has discussed COVID-19 and data sharing of disease statistics, as well as country best practices in managing the pandemic.

During the online meeting on 3 June, a representative of the European Commission presented ongoing activities in the area of COVID-19 data collection, particularly focusing on the different collection methods and types of data that are used to populate the COVID-19 statistical dashboard on the European Commission Crisis Management Laboratory (ECML) Covid website. Eastern partner countries were encouraged to share their solutions to manage the crisis, and several countries mentioned or demonstrated epidemiological dashboards for tracking the infection rates.

Georgia presented a centralised COVID-19 monitoring system that is updated twice a day, as well as other solutions like contact tracing through mobile app use (even though the user take-up on the mobile app was not as high as expected), and the highly effective and innovative practice of the combining e-Prescription platform with Georgian Post capabilities for medicine delivery to at-risk groups. Notably, ePrescription use has expanded beyond the Tbilisi area to all the country’s regions.

Belarus emphasised the importance of collaboration between public and private sector in crisis management, and shared its experience regarding the re-use of existing infrastructure like Telemedicine and e-Prescription, as well as the development version of their epidemiological dashboard.

Ukraine has developed additional functionality to its existing Electronic Medical Card system for COVID-19 case reporting, as well as an online epidemiological dashboard for statistical overview of the disease. This highly effective approach was based by incrementally and quickly extending the existing and operational National eHealth interoperability platform.

Meanwhile Azerbaijan has developed separate software for monitoring the spread of COVID-19, which is integrated with the national health service and hospital management system and available for use for hospitals to help determine patient criticality. A dashboard for pandemic tracking is available to the country’s crisis management team and this specific module was implemented at high speed using the country’s own IT capabilities.

In Moldova, epidemiological data is gathered from multiple sources and input to a publicly accessible COVID-19 dashboard that visually displays information regarding the spread of COVID-19 on a regional and city level and from various aspects such as age, gender, etc.  It is based on granular data on higher risk locations, and people are strongly encouraged to take mindful decisions of going vs. not going to higher risk locations. The page usage rate was very high (~1,600,000 unique visitors since March).

Armenia has seen the development of various applications for COVID responses as well. 

By bringing together the EC and Eastern partner countries, the EU4Digital eHealth team facilitated an opportunity for information sharing and the inclusion of Eastern partner country data on the EC dashboard.

As discussed during the meeting, dashboards that allow epidemiological data tracking at national and, particularly, regional level are empowering citizens to better evaluate their own choices regarding acceptable travel risks, as various restrictions imposed by the governments are gradually lifted.

Find out more

eHealth Network meeting

EU COVID-19 statistical dashboard  

COVID-19 statistical dashboard: specific incidence map 

COVID-19 statistical dashboard: incidence ratio map