Abstract
Health Heatmap of India is an open data platform built for bringing together data from diverse sources and facilitating visualization, analysis, and insight building from such data. In this paper, we describe the context and need for such an open data platform and describe the technical aspects of building it. The beta site of the portal is available at https://healthheatmapindia.org.
Highlights
Introduction and Importance of OpenData in HealthOpen data is a movement that is gaining momentum all over the world
It is crucial to recognise that the first building block is the assembly and availability of open data conforming to the FAIR principles that will enable subsequent benefits in research, policy, public health management as well as an informed and enlightened citizenry
The governance structure and inter-sectoral coordination had been problematic, with human, animal and environmental health controlled by different ministries, with little cross-talk
Summary
Open data is a movement that is gaining momentum all over the world. It advances science and scientific communications as open science[1], but it has the power of transforming societies and the process of informed decisionmaking. The availability of open data in different scientific and social spheres contributes to enabling and establishing transparency and accountability, essential pillars of a democratic society It supports informed discussions and debates among citizens, scientists and governments and drives evidence-driven policy planning[2]. The pandemic requires careful monitoring and near real-time availability of open data for governments, societies and citizens to manage and control the disease Many such government, research and volunteer-driven initiatives have sprung up to aggregate and provide open data. Some like the Johns Hopkins University, Coronavirus resource center https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html and volunteer-driven crowd-sourced efforts https://www.covid19india.org/ are effective and widely used They provide regularly updated and near real-time dashboards on a spatial platform on the status and spread of the pandemic. It is crucial to recognise that the first building block is the assembly and availability of open data conforming to the FAIR principles that will enable subsequent benefits in research, policy, public health management as well as an informed and enlightened citizenry
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