Sydney Univ. launches $4m platform for real-time data on COVID-19

13 / 05 / 2020

By Marwa Nassar - -

The Sydney University has launched a 4-million-dollar digital health platform to provide real-time information on the coronavirus (COVID-19).

The platform will enable front line medical workers treating COVID-19 patients to use real-time data and analysis to improve health outcomes.

The Digital Health CRC‘s Clinical Data and Analytics Platform (CDAP) will help decision-making by clinicians by providing nationally available real-time analytics on the progression of COVID-19 to severe disease.

Digital Health CRC CEO Dr Victor Pantano said COVID19 had created an unprecedented challenge.

“We currently don’t have well established and proven treatments for COVID-19 anywhere in the world,” Dr Pantano said.

“The COVID19 pandemic highlights the need to have effective and timely ways to gather information about people and to analyze this immediately so that doctors can use that information to guide the way they treat the patient in front of them.”

“Such real time use of data has not been possible to date. CDAP is one way in which this can be achieved.”

University of Sydney’s Professor Tom Snelling, who is CDAP’s clinical lead and head of the Health and Clinical Analytics team in the School of Public Health, said the pandemic had shown how quickly clinicians needed to be able to adapt to changing conditions.

“We need digital solutions that improve our knowledge of how best to manage people with COVID-19 in near real time,” said Professor Snelling, an infectious diseases physician who recently joined the University from the Telethon Kids Institute.

“The CDAP has been built to rapidly extract and organise clinical data, which will help us learn why some people have severe disease and which treatments result in the best outcomes.”

The platform will support clinicians during the pandemic but also had a broader focus, said Professor Tim Shaw, the Digital Health CRC’s Director of Research at the University of Sydney’s Charles Perkins Centre and the School of Health Sciences.

“We have funded this [CDAP] project both to support COVID-19 outcomes and provide a lasting platform that can be used for multiple care contexts,” Professor Shaw said.

“This project will allow us to help solve some of the issues we face in accessing and sharing national data sets to support frontline care.”

QUT’s eResearch director, Professor Matthew Bellgard, is leading the CDAP project and acutely recognizes the imperative to work closely with patients and support medical staff dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic to obtain immediate access to the latest treatment strategies and clinical trial outcomes.

“The close involvement of both Queensland and New South Wales Health departments will ensure sharing and cross-fertilization of knowledge and expertise of health professionals across both states for real world impact,” Professor Bellgard said.

“We are also working closely with consumer groups and privacy and ethics experts to ensure that the way we create and use the platform complies with the expectations of the community and legislation.”