VODAN-Africa researchers design a FAIR digital data health infrastructure that is helping in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic

By developing an improved health data management system, the Virus Outbreak Data Network (VODAN)-Africa research team is enabling local and global distributed access to crucial data required to fight the COVID-19 pandemic, future disease outbreaks and general disease conditions.

Led by Professor Mirjam van Reisen of the Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC), VODAN-Africa is a project focused on addressing various issues that are common to health data management across the African continent. “Major challenges we are currently tackling include the deficiency in production of quality clinical data, lack of ownership of health data – especially when it is sent to foreign-based systems, as well as technical obstacles related to digitalization of data and regulatory differences across regions”, says Dr. Jeremia Pyuza, LUMC Global PhD student of the LUMC Departments of Parasitology and Pathology.

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