Overview
We responded rapidly to the COVID-19 pandemic, developing the world’s largest COVID-19 specific individual patient data repository, a mapping review of where COVID-19 research is being done, and surveying publicly available information to produce reports (used by the WHO and other regulators) about COVID-19 medical supplies .
We were also part of CDISC task force to rapidly develop an interim COVID-19 Therapeutic Area User Guide, to standardise clinical data. The guide details how COVID-19 specific data fields are to be incorporated into the CDISC standards, enabling data sharing and therefore providing better evidence to health policy makers.
The COVID-19 database
During the COVID-19 pandemic, pooling and re-using data spread out across many countries was a critical tool for generating evidence and guiding policy. Our international, interoperable data platform enabled researchers to work collaboratively to provide rapid insight into COVID-19’s causes, development and treatment.
We worked with ISARIC to assemble the world’s largest database on COVID-19 clinical data, with over 500,000 individual patient datasets harmonised onto a single platform.
All of this data is available, for free, to any non-profit researcher in the world: to make this data more discoverable, it can also be accessed via the Vivli platform.
To date, this pooled data has been used in over 20 individual patient data (IPD) meta-analyses generating unique knowledge on the natural history of COVID-19.
The COVID-19 Mapping review
The IDDO COVID-19 mapping review is a harmonised database that monitors the volume of globally registered COVID-19 studies. It is easy to use and free, and we update it monthly to summarise the key characteristics of COVID-19 clinical trial registrations.
Even though the COVID-19 pandemic affected lower- and middle-income countries the most, our analyses of this data found that most COVID-19 research was led by researchers in higher-income countries. Funders in turn prioritised funding to take into account the lack of work led by lower and middle income countries.
We want to change this situation, and we are a founder member of the COVID-19 Clinical Research Coalition (CERCLE), which aims to accelerate desperately needed research in places an already-fragile health systems where infectious diseases cause a major impact. CERCLE is an international coalition of scientists, physicians, funders, and policymakers from over 900 organisation in nearly 100 countries, working together to further research to benefit populations that haven’t been prioritised in global research responses. IDDO is also a partner in the ANTICOV clinical trial platform, which has the specific aim of testing the safety and efficacy of COVID-19 treatments in low-resource settings.
Surveying COVID-19 medical supplies
The high demand for COVID-19 medical during the pandemic, led to shortages, and inevitably, an increase in the risk of substandard and falsified (SF) medical products for COVID-19 and other essential medicines.
We collate public domain information on the quality of current medicinal products for COVID-19’s prevention/treatment to produce monthly reports used by WHO and other regulators to track and respond to this continuing global issue.
We are registered as a re3data.org repository. Stay up to date with COVID-19 and other IDDO data platforms by signing up to our newsletter. Have questions? Email us at info@iddo.org.