World Health Data Hub (WHDH) case study: WHO Global Clinical Platform collects clinical data to deepen our understanding of infectious diseases and clinical management during emergencies
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World Health Organization
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4 p.
This case study describes how the World Health Organization Global Clinical Platform strengthened its capacity to collect, manage and analyse clinical data through the adoption of the World Health Data Hub (WHDH) Data Lake. The Global Clinical Platform is a secure repository of anonymized individual-level clinical data from hospitalized patients, designed to improve understanding of emerging infectious diseases and support clinical management during public health emergencies. With data from more than one million patients, approximately one thousand health facilities and over sixty-five countries, the Platform required expanded infrastructure to address increasing demands related to data storage, security, computational capacity and accessibility. The publication outlines these operational challenges and presents the WHDH Data Lake as a scalable solution for managing large volumes of complex health data. The report describes the implementation of secure, centralized data storage, structured data lifecycle management processes and enhanced cloud-based computing resources that enabled faster data processing and analysis. It highlights improvements achieved through the migration of datasets from commercial storage services, including strengthened data security, more efficient quality control workflows and increased analytical capacity. The case study also discusses future opportunities for expanding data sharing, visualization, collaboration and data integration within WHO. By illustrating the application of WHDH services to the Global Clinical Platform, the document demonstrates how modern data infrastructure can support timely evidence generation, research collaboration and informed decision-making during infectious disease outbreaks and other health emergencies.
This case study describes how the World Health Organization Global Clinical Platform strengthened its capacity to collect, manage and analyse clinical data through the adoption of the World Health Data Hub (WHDH) Data Lake. The Global Clinical Platform is a secure repository of anonymized individual-level clinical data from hospitalized patients, designed to improve understanding of emerging infectious diseases and support clinical management during public health emergencies. With data from more than one million patients, approximately one thousand health facilities and over sixty-five countries, the Platform required expanded infrastructure to address increasing demands related to data storage, security, computational capacity and accessibility. The publication outlines these operational challenges and presents the WHDH Data Lake as a scalable solution for managing large volumes of complex health data. The report describes the implementation of secure, centralized data storage, structured data lifecycle management processes and enhanced cloud-based computing resources that enabled faster data processing and analysis. It highlights improvements achieved through the migration of datasets from commercial storage services, including strengthened data security, more efficient quality control workflows and increased analytical capacity. The case study also discusses future opportunities for expanding data sharing, visualization, collaboration and data integration within WHO. By illustrating the application of WHDH services to the Global Clinical Platform, the document demonstrates how modern data infrastructure can support timely evidence generation, research collaboration and informed decision-making during infectious disease outbreaks and other health emergencies.