Dr. Wilbert van Panhuis, was scrolling through Twitter over the winter holiday break when he noticed chatter among infectious disease epidemiologists about a new virus infecting people in Wuhan, China.
Those tweets spurred a scramble for his team at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health to establish a platform for research collaborations and data sharing on what would become the COVID-19 pandemic. Immediately, the researchers started to compile datasets and early research publications into a central COVID-19 repository for the scientific community, and last week, they launched the online portal for COVID-19 modeling research — a clearinghouse for sharing data-driven discoveries about COVID-19.
“Multiple datasets of transcribed case information have emerged early in the outbreak,” Dr. van Panhuis said. “Scientists so far have published close to a thousand COVID-19 reports and papers, including 150+ papers reporting estimates of epidemiological characteristics of the outbreak.”
Dr. van Panhuis directs the Coordination Center for the Models of Infectious Disease Agent Study (MIDAS), a collaborative research network launched by the National Institutes of Health in 2004 to establish U.S. modeling capabilities against infectious disease threats. In short, The Pitt MIDAS Center is a global infectious disease data matchmaking service.
Many of the 300 MIDAS members are conducting modeling research on COVID-19 and are contributing to an extraordinary international collection of data and information regarding the outbreak.
“We’re playing a crucial role in bringing the infectious disease modeling research community together to efficiently share information.”
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Full story by Dr. Erin Hare and Ms. Allison Hydzik for the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC).
Tags: Friday Letter Submission, Publish on March 27
