COVID-19 open data
With the spread of COVID-19, health data become more important than ever, leading to decisions that affected all walks of life and the implementation of new COVID-19 restrictions. As such health information is managed by TEHIK and in order to provide fast and comprehensive information on COVID-19 patients to crisis managers, researchers and the media, TEHIK started to publish it as open data for the first time in Estonian medical history. In parallel with the start of COVID-19 vaccination, TEHIK also started to release vaccination information as open data.
What is open data?
Open data is free machine-readable data that can be freely used, re-used and redistributed by anyone, and can be used to conduct research and make informed decisions based on data.
How does TEHIK publish open data?
TEHIK publishes data on both COVID-19 patients and vaccinated people on a daily basis based on the data sent to the health information system by healthcare providers.
Together with open data, TEHIK always publishes its variant of visualisation of the data: https://www.terviseamet.ee/et/koroonaviirus/koroonakaart
Why is it necessary?
The availability of information on COVID-19 vaccination is necessary for the planning and implementation of vaccination activities. The open data is machine-readable, which means that no one has to submit numbers manually for reporting – it reduces the possibility of errors significantly. In addition to systematic reporting for statistics, we have fast real-time data exchange with healthcare providers.
What to consider with open data
Publishing of open data is currently an evolving process and new extracts may be added. Data structures may be supplemented or changed in the course of development.
Open data of the Patient Portal and the descriptions are available here: opendata.digilugu.ee