Big data in COVID-19 surveillance system: A commentary

Abstract

© 2020 Journal of Education and Health Promotion | Published by Wolters Kluwer - Medknow 1 Big data in COVID‑19 surveillance system: A commentary Sir, Surveillance systems are public health eyes or fingers on the pulse of community health.[1] These systems are as a cornerstone of decision‑making on epidemics and infectious diseases where the prevalence and pandemics of recent infectious diseases such as the flu and COVID‑19 have doubled the importance of using. From the World Health Organization’s perspective, this type of systems is needed for on‑time responding and evaluation due to continuous and systematic health information management;[1] the surveillance systems pursue the following goals at the regional and national levels: identifying and providing proper care to patient; identifying, investigating, and controlling disease outbreaks; and preventing the spread of the disease.[1] The traditional systems are time consuming, costly, and restricted to specific geographical areas.[2] Therefore, monitoring, predicting the incidence, and the emergence of infectious diseases require reliable and up‑to‑date surveillance systems where it is possible via information technologies such as big data.[3] Taiwan created big data for analysis where it aids case identification by generating real‑time alerts during clinical visiting based on travel history and clinical symptoms.