Mapping the South African health landscape in response to COVID-19

TL;DR

This paper discusses the development of a comprehensive, up-to-date mapping and data platform for COVID-19 healthcare facilities in South Africa, addressing data gaps and improving public access to critical health infrastructure information.

Contribution

It introduces a volunteer-driven project that improves COVID-19 hospital data quality, completeness, validation, and visualization for better public and healthcare worker access.

Findings

Enhanced COVID-19 hospital data accuracy and completeness

Development of a visualisation platform for public health information

Future implementation of a web application for real-time data access

Abstract

When the COVID-19 disease pandemic infiltrated the world, there was an immediate need for accurate information. As with any outbreak, the outbreak follows a clear trajectory, and subsequently, the supporting information for that outbreak needs to address the needs associated with that stage of the outbreak. At first, there was a need to inform the public of the information related to the initial situation related to the "who" of the COVID-19 disease. However, as time continued, the "where", "when" and "how to" related questions started to emerge in relation to the public healthcare system themselves. Questions surrounding the health facilities including COVID-19 hospital bed capacity, locations of designated COVID-19 facilities, and general information related to these facilities were not easily accessible to the general public. Furthermore, the available information was found to be outdated, fragmented across several platforms, and still had gaps in the data related to these facilities. To rectify this problem, a group of volunteers working on the covid19za project stepped in to assist. Each member leading a part of the project chose to focus on one of four problems related to the challenges associated with the Hospital information including: data quality, data completeness, data source validation and data visualisation capacity. As the project developed, so did the sophistication of the data, visualisation and core function of the project. The future prospects of this project relate to a Progressive Web Application that will avail this information for the public as well as healthcare workers through comprehensive mapping and data quality.