The BREATHE – the Health Data Research Hub for Respiratory Health, a Health Data Research UK funded Digital Innovation Hub, has become the central data sharing facility for the ZOE COVID-19 Symptoms Tracker App data, which is now flowing into the SAIL Databank on a daily basis, and provides insight into possible symptoms present in the UK for a population of around 3 million users so far, from all 4 nations of the UK.
Thus far, BREATHE, through the SAIL Databank as its trusted research environment, has been able to rapidly provide access to users from the NHS, local and national governments, and academic sites feeding back directly into the national COVID-19 response, and is continuing to facilitate access to such requests on a daily basis.
The data has been used to inform the 4 nations’ emergency COVID committees, providing detailed insight into the possible presence of participant-reported symptoms of COVID-19 across the UK. BREATHE itself has provided analyst resource to the effort through its national network of academic partners, and is working closely with national coordinating centres and leading national scientists to identify patterns and feed back intelligence which will aid the fight against COVID-19. This information is allowing the NHS and governments to be kept up to date with public symptom prevalence and therefore, for example, how to best direct testing within different localities, and also policy making for such things as the current lockdown situation.
Outside of the symptoms tracking, BREATHE is also collaborating with a number of COVID-19 studies, and is hoping to provide services using the SAIL Databank as a safe haven and linkage facilitator for emerging data collections for a variety of COVID-19 research developments over the coming weeks and months.
BY CHRIS ORTON, SWANSEA UNIVERSITY
Related news article and media coverage http://///sail-tech-support-covid-19-app/
BREATHE – Health Data Research Hub is one of the nine Centres of Excellence based in Population Data Science at Swansea University Medical School.