Uniklinik RWTH Aachen has started a large-scale study in the CoDaP project to further map the heterogeneity in Covid patients admitted to the intensive care units in the Euregio Rhine-Meuse with Belgian and Dutch Limburg, the province of Liège, the German-speaking Community and the Aachen region. Despite a quite homogeneous population within this Euregion, there are remarkable differences. For example, the treatment strategies vary widely and the healthcare systems, hospital infrastructure and the criteria for admission to intensive care units are different. But this mutual variation also provides a rich source for research on successful treatment strategies
Within the collaboration between Hospital East Limburg (ZOL) Genk, Jessa hospital Hasselt, Maastricht UMC +, Uniklinik RWTH Aachen, Groupe Santé CHC Liège and the German data science company RapidMiner, the focus is mainly on the interventions and care outcomes used during the first COVID-19 wave. The available data and the variation in clinical practice are brought together in the Corona Data driven interventions & data Platform, i.e. the CoDaP project, to gain new insights. Advanced modeling will attempt to further unravel the heterogeneity and reveal the success factors for best practices in the region. This would be an important step forward in the process of achieving evidence-based uniform treatment strategies for COVID-19 patients. The collected data will also be used to improve predictive models and to develop new models.
To enable smooth data sharing, a new data platform is being built in the project. Each hospital uses its own system to keep track of patient data, which complicates the collection and processing of the different datasets. The new platform will automatically export data from multiple computer systems, while respecting general data protection regulations of patients.
The data platform should also provide a better picture of the patient spread in the Euregion and the current bed occupation in the Intensive Care Units in the Euregion. These facilities, at barely 50 km from each other, differ widely. For example, in the Netherlands there are 6.4, in Belgium 15.9 and in Germany 29.2 beds in the intensive care units per 100,000 inhabitants. If we would be able to monitor the capacity in real time and get a better picture of the clinical course of patients, there would be more time to reorganize and hence the healthcare resources in the region could be optimally used. The data platform could thus improve cooperation between the various intensive care units in the Euregion.
Partners:
This project is funded by INTERREG and the European Union.
