Consolidating Data from the World Health Organization's 6 Global Regions

A child under the age of 5 who enters one of 70 hospitals worldwide with symptoms of meningitis, pneumonia or rota virus, is accordingly enrolled in a surveillance network run by the World Health Organization (WHO). Demographic, clinical and viral data is first collected, then tracked through the numerous sites to which it can be sent for testing and more, between the hospital(s), labs, national reference labs and regional reference labs. The system allows for the capture and collection of all necessary data for analysis as well as record the results:

• which pathogen and strain of the disease the child contracted,
• whether the vaccination of the child should have covered it,
• all the way to the case completion status. 

This project is straightforward and complex: the data collection is simple but considering that each of the 6 global regions are essentially autonomous —with their own in-house data systems and preferences— and that each country has varying levels of technical and financial capabilities, made absolute and imperative the need for a very flexible system.

The project accepts data in three ways:

1. via online logins with varying levels of user permissions.
2. a RESTful Application Program Interface (API) for countries and regions with the capabilities to automate the collection of data, and
3. a complex import system capable of performing complicated transform operations to bring the data into compliance with the standard variable set.