COVID-19 Research

The Virus Outbreak Data Africa Network (VODAN Africa)

Principal Researchers: Dr. Mouhamed Mpezamihigo (KIU), Prof. Francisca Oladipo (KIU), Prof. Mirjam van Reisen (Leiden Univ), Prof. Bert Meerman (GO FAIR Foundation), Dr. Erik Schultes (GFISOC, Leiden), Ms Mariam Bassaja (KIU & Leiden Uni) On-Going

Duration: April - September, 2020
Research Objectives:
  • To establish an Implementation Network for the Virus Outbreak Data Africa Network (VODAN Africa).
  • To enable distributed access to the critical data needed from Africa to fight and contain the COVID-19 pandemic by addressing the current and immediate challenges to use and connect digital health data worldwide to follow the outbreak.
  • To ensure Africa's health professionals and data scientists are equipped to harness machine-learning and artificial intelligence (AI) approaches, to discover meaningful patterns in epidemic outbreaks.
  • To ensure that all COVID-19 data are FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable.) as specified by the WHO.
  • To develop the First Machine 4 Machine (M4M) Metadata for COVID-19 Data in the partner countries.
Nature of Research output:

With funding of 84,000 euro from the Philips Foundation and additional funding being expected from the Dutch Government, the research brings together partner universities and MoHs in African countries and Researchers from European organizations to FAIRify all COVID-19 Data as specified by the WHO; and develop Fair Data Points on COVID-19 for Uganda, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Nigeria, Tunisia, and Ethiopia