DE4Bios: The power of data in fighting COVID

Engineering Innovation in

E-Health

DE4Bios: The power of data in fighting COVID-19

DE4Bios, our Digital Enabler-based bio-surveillance platform, provides updated status information in real time on the evolving epidemic. Helping doctors and local authorities work in safety

Challenge

Slowing and monitoring the evolving pandemic. Supporting health authority decision-making regarding restrictions

Solution

An ecosystem platform that can integrate diverse transversal data sources, combined with data analytic models that glean knowledge from cross-cutting information

Results

Quickly identify subjects for testing. Pinpoint areas most at risk in order to facilitate strategic decision-making

Challenge

An ecosystem platform that fights the pandemic

Slowing the COVID-19 emergency with data. That’s the goal of DE4Bios, our data-driven and cloud-native bio-surveillance system. It gleans data from different sources then integrates and harmonises them.
This provides updated status information in real time on the evolving pandemic while respecting privacy. Using our Digital Enabler ecosystem platform, you can map and geolocate infected subjects and detect clusters requiring urgent attention.

“DE4Bios emerged over a matter of days in the Veneto Region after the emergence of cases in Vo’,” says Arianna Cocchiglia, Director of Innovation & Healthcare Partnerships at Engineering. "We knew the region’s information. We knew the system's capabilities. So, we put our technology together with what the territory needed. It took just a week to give general practitioners a tool to monitor COVID patients. This also gave the regional task force a way of monitoring the overall pandemic in just a few days.”

DE4Bios makes it possible to show the concentration of a phenomenon in a territory or more narrowly defined area. This can help health authorities make the most appropriate decisions in terms of restricting personal mobility or access to a crisis areas. It also allows predictive analysis of the evolving infection situation and identifying areas where COVID-19 is most likely to spread. This lets health facilities organize in time.

Solution

Protecting public health

"To cope with an event like the COVID-19 pandemic, policy makers need to rapidly make data-based decisions,” explains Lorenzo Gubian. Gubian was head of the health system in the Veneto Region when DE4Bios was developed. Today he’s the General Manager of ARIA Spa . "DE4Bios helps us verify any information that’s useful to fight or control the pandemic and understand how it’s evolving."

Over the last year, DE4Bios has developed and kept up with the pandemic’s continually changing scenarios. Beginning with the first lockdown, it was used to monitor potential clusters linked to businesses or schools. It was also used to track COVID variant trends and the progress of vaccine activity.

"COVID-19, and what’s happened over the last year, have shown that data is indispensable,” says Arianna Cocchiglia. “At this point, we need to begin to create transversal systems that can aggregate any type of information public administrators may have, not just health data. It’s important to have control over local data or that relating to people while always respecting individual privacy.

DE4Bios has become a tool for protecting public health and the community. This is because it provides an integrated overall view of any data relating to clinical health situations, households, workers and workplace safety, students and educational activity, as well as health structures like retirement homes. Managing all this information creates an ecosystem that includes general practitioners, public safety authorities, paediatricians and regional task forces. The resulting system supports these actors in taking immediate preventative action. It also lets them gain real-time control over an evolving epidemic from a clinical and social point of view.

"DE4Bios has highlighted another value of the data - concludes Lanfranco Marasso -. The value of the data which,can really contribute to saving lives, if used in a precise manner and above all with very short times. And this was precisely the most great contribution in the first phase of the Covid emergency in Italy by DE4Bios ".

During the first phase of the pandemic, Engineering was not just a data supplier. it was a partner that helped us come up with a solution. This solution was developed in an open rather than controlled way. It involved anyone who needed to use the platform. This agile co-design approach has let us reach targets that would have taken months or even years in ‘peacetime’ or under normal circumstances.

Lorenzo Gubian

General Manager of ARIA Spa

Results

Fight the contagion

Identify and predict the areas most at risk

Define strategies and intervention priorities

Identify new subjects on whom to carry out tests

Project value

Enabling Technologies

Engineering proprietary products & other technologies

Digital Enabler

E-Health