Since late February 2020, the Netherlands, like many other countries, has had to deal with the Coronavirus. The numbers of cases, IC patients and deaths shot up, resulting in a ‘smart lockdown’ and an overloaded healthcare system. That has had a significant impact on both healthcare and the economy. On 1 June, the government set a staged plan in motion for lifting the ‘smart lockdown’ as conditions allowed. That has given us more freedom, but it is important to make sure that what happened earlier this year does not happen again. Ahti has therefore linked up with various partners to start two new projects. The first is the COVID-19 Healthcare Pressure Risk Dashboard, which gives insight into the risk of ‘pressure hotspots’ developing within the healthcare system in the event of a second wave. The second project is INCODA (the COVID Data Initiative), in which we will generate insight that may help to reduce the pressure on the healthcare system. In both projects, we are using data in innovative ways to arrive at solutions.

COVID-19 Healthcare Pressure Risk Dashboard: Mapping local differences and identifying hotspots

In collaboration with researcher Mark Verhagen and health start-up Bits of Care, ahti has developed a dashboard that allows you to map local differences in COVID-19-related pressure risks within the healthcare system. The dashboard allows you to see which regions, municipalities or neighbourhoods are most likely to have serious healthcare needs in the event of a second wave. In other words, where do the people at most risk of admission to hospital or even intensive care live? The researchers are using microdata from Statistics Netherlands on variables such as age, population density and socioeconomic status (SES). The difference between this dashboard and others is that it is focused on prevention rather than current infections.

Want to find out more about the dashboard? You can see it here.

INCODA: Gaining insight into the progression of the Coronavirus to reduce the burden on the healthcare system

Ahti and Amsterdam UMC (AMC and VUmc sites) will work on INCODA until the end of 2021 to provide insight into the course of the COVID-19 pandemic in the Netherlands and support decision-making about response measures. The aim is to predict, amongst other things, the burden on the healthcare system, on the basis of various risk profiles: which people are at greatest risk of becoming seriously ill with COVID-19? That requires insight into the epidemiology, transmission and medical progression of the disease. To that end, we are studying groups at high risk of becoming seriously ill following infection with COVID-19. That involves combining microdata from Statistics Netherlands (including socio-demographic data) first with intensive-care and hospital data. The data comes from the CovidPredict project, subsidised by ZonMW (Netherlands Organisation for Health Research and Development). We have also received extra support from the City of Amsterdam with a view to enabling rapid implementation of the results.

Want to find out more about the approach taken in this project? You can read more on the INCODA project page!

Contact

Want more information or do you have a question? Please contact Rosan van Zoest.