Can Open Data Hack COVID-19?

Could open data for COVID-19 help people come together, innovate and #hackCOVID19? In The Martian (2015) film, botanist astronaut Mark Watney, played by Matt Damon, took a spirited approach when faced with an impossible challenge and overwhelming odds.

With COVID-19, we're facing a similarly daunting challenge with overwhelming odds. While most agree we shouldn't wait for a solution but be a part of one, many rightly ask, what can we do? The smartest answer happens to be the kindest. Help others.

Right now, almost everyone is talking about pandemic-related statistics, sharing line graphs, bar charts and maps. While headline patient datasets like confirmed, death and recovery are published widely, they're inadequate at helping people innovate.

In a crisis, improvisation is key. Yet currently there's too little data to support agile, critical or innovative thinking so while a few act, many just observe. What’s missing is good data so people wanting to tackle the pandemic can take action based on good information.

We, The People, Want To Help

Bodies like the World Health Organization do amazing work tracking headline datasets for COVID-19, but who's tracking supplementary data, like contact, symptoms and testing, let alone other useful datasets? How is data fed to innovative people, groups and hubs? Can data be collected, coordinated and published via grassroots data activism? Can communities be enfranchised by good data to do more themselves? How can you unify all this data?

Good Data Drives Good Innovation

Times like these reveal the potential for open data, especially when considered through the lens of machine learning #ML and artificial intelligence #AI. While sectors like healthcare have some open data, such as healthdata.gov and MIMIC Critical Care Database, more data can be unlocked by closed data silos, both in healthcare and other sectors.

Of course, how ‘open’ should open data be? Good question. The debate is worth having. At the very least to define a spectrum along which open data could exist and the point where it becomes acceptable. At most to catalyse an open data revolution. Why? Because a society built on good open data stands a better chance of being good to its people.

Hubei, China, Is Now Safer Than Great Britain

Driven by a spirit towards solidarity, China has shown the world the practical use of big data in disease containment. George Thompson, a YouTuber from Bristol, UK, recently posted a fascinating video explaining how the Hubei province in China, pandemic ground zero, used location intelligence, various datasets and publicly accessible mapped colour codes to arrest the local spread of COVID-19, in the process becoming now safer than Britain.

Ian Haynes, founder of the Mapcite location SaaS platform, said in a recent article that any country-level data about COVID-19 with no real granularity had limited application, but that city, county or suburb data, supplemented with practical datasets, could help society become more involved in controlling COVID-19. Individual surveillance, while controversial, could help even more. Ian should know, having tested and proven Mapcite’s technology in 2009 when he successfully predicted the Influenza A virus subtype H1N1 (A/H1N1) pandemic.

As a SaaS technology, Mapcite can make open data universally available and accessible. It also has the ability to structure, unify and map big data down to individual locations. When asked, Ian said Mapcite could facilitate an open map comprising many open datasets which people, companies and organisations could submit. This could be published anonymised at a community level and de-identified at an individual level via a mobile web application. In fact, many web apps could be published, each focused on unique humanitarian use cases.

“Sharing crowdsourced local data would let us both predict and control the probable local virus movement” explained Ian. When asked if the pandemic could be handled differently, Ian said, “The financial markets are at their worst since the last global crash. Warnings have gone out that the public healthcare system won’t cope with the pandemic and economies will be irrevocably damaged. Most probably, no single company or organisation will be able to stem the flow of the virus spread, it would be na?ve to think so. In extreme scenarios such as this, I’d like to think global co-operation for the greater good trumps other needs.”

Steve Walker, an associate, framed the opportunity best when he said that “it is time for governments to open the doors to new ideas, emerging technologies and people willing to make a differentiated and compelling contribution to dealing with #covid19.”

Is Now a Good Time to Innovate?

George, Ian and Steve, thank you. You remind us that in extraordinary times, extraordinary measures are needed, and that the smartest thing to do now is to think differently and hack COVID-19 together. We can wait to be saved, or we can save each other.

Do people really want to rally together against this pandemic? Google says yes, showing a spike in “how to help” queries. Great, so how can people's desire to do good be activated?

Good Data

Inspired by George, Ian, Steve and my experience with the United Nations Global Compact where I saw how corporate social responsibility tackles humanitarian challenges through positive impact, I propose that we the people establish a Good Data Cooperative #GDC.

What could GDC do? Help us hack humanitarian challenges like COVID-19 with:

• Open Data
• Open Analysis

Open data could be donated by people, businesses or organisations. Analysed, interpreted and transformed into insights, it could then be used to tackle various open briefs. Serving as a not-for-profit, GDC could coordinate private and public organisations, professionals and open data with humanitarian challenges like COVID-19, expected to last up to 18 months.

As Ben Klarich pointed out in a recent article, there is no better time to unlock data-driven innovation than right now. Ideas don't discriminate, people discriminate against ideas, so let's use evidence-based thinking to surface good solutions, meritocratically, and may the best ideas, not the loudest ones, solve the most wicked humanitarian challenges.

Good Innovation

GDC work could be sparked by open briefs, sourced from private and public organisations, industry bodies and professional associations. This work could be coordinated, stewarded and patroned within data labs and data jams, ultimately finding itself expressed through innovative technology, product and service recommendations developed by members.

Launched with a focus on COVID-19, the GDC could aim to make open data universally available to hack humanitarian challenges seeking to:

• Help healthcare professionals deliver more patient care
• Help essential service frontline personnel keep working
• Help businesses with empty shops stave off unemployment

Long-term, the GDC could tackle other humanitarian challenges suffered in sectors like: crisis and emergency, climate and nature, urban planning, security, economic development, agriculture, sustainability and innovation, to name just a few.

Is a 'Good Data Cooperative' a Good Idea?

The GDC could enfranchise members with the ability to analyse, disrupt and innovate the status quo by helping them develop trials, proof-of-concepts and case studies for change. It could provide harmonised data, tools and a universal workbench so members could leapfrog obstacles to smart innovation, like stubborn siloed data wanting to stay unstructured because its extract, transform and load performance is hamstrung by non-standard local protocols.

GDC could enable spark clusters around specific challenges, which in turn can be powered by short-term data jams for rapid prototyping of evidence-based thinking and long-term data labs for human-centred design, systems thinking and other problem-solving modalities.

To help members enforce privacy policies, access could be limited to member researchers, analysts and data workers. Data access could be tracked using chain-of-title. Datasets could be managed on a distributed repository run by trusted institutional partners like universities who could offer open data to their students, academics, alumni and peers.

Broadly speaking, the Good Data Cooperative could:

• Tackle humanitarian challenges with open data
• Support practical innovation with open data
• Promote universal participation with open data
• Supplement organizational data with crowdsourced open data
• Foster research, analysis and collaboration around open data
• Converge multi-disciplinary skills and capabilities around open data
• Accept donations of open data from people, businesses and government
• Accept donations of open analysis from people, businesses and government
• Feed open datasets to governments, businesses, organisations and people
• Offer a data hub and feeds, data jams and labs, and a data workbench
• Publish mobile web applications based on open data
• Publish kits, resources and papers based on open data
• Provide open data to technology hackathons

Next Steps

So, what do you think? Would you support the Good Data Cooperative? It goes without saying that many considerations still need to be made in relation to the GDC, ideally by a founding consortium of professionals, businesses and organisations. If you would like to:

• Support open data/analysis to hack COVID-19
• Administrate open data/analysis to hack COVID-19
• Donate open data/analysis to hack COVID-19
• Download open data/analysis to hack COVID-19

If you wish to administrate, donate or download open data or analysis, please respond below. Otherwise, if you just support the idea, please help spread the invitation to others.

Response 1

If we're connected, please 'comment' below with the word SUPPORT, ADMIN, DONATE or DOWNLOAD, depending on how you want to hack COVID-19

Response 2

If we're not connected, please send me an 'invite to connect' with the word SUPPORT, ADMIN, DONATE or DOWNLOAD, given how you want to hack COVID-19