This webinar is part of the Advanced Methods Webinar Series
Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, real-time data and analytics have been important to both understanding the virus’ impact on populations and health systems and informing the public health response. The unprecedented need for timely, relevant analytics presented challenges to many health systems. ICES -- an independent not-for-profit research institute that houses Ontario’s administrative health data -- responded to this challenge by supporting decision-makers with near real-time data and analytics to help inform both COVID-19 testing and vaccination roll-out. Using existing research infrastructure and public health expertise, ICES was well-positioned to provide both rapid, ad hoc reports and routine reporting and analytics to policymakers and Public Health Units.
This webinar will provide an overview of some of these reports and analytics and describe their impact upon COVID-19 testing and vaccination policy and practice in Ontario. We also will describe some of the novel analytical methods we employed, such as text-mining of laboratory test results and fuzzy address matching to identify residents of congregate care settings and share some of the methodological challenges and lessons we learned in the process.
View recorded presentation below.
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Presenters
Michael Paterson is a Scientist and Lead of the Chronic Disease and Pharmacotherapy Research Program at ICES. He is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Family Medicine at McMaster University and the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation at the University of Toronto. Michael’s research spans the fields of health services, drug safety and drug policy.
Hannah Chung is an Associate Research Methodologist with the Populations & Public Health Research Program and Primary Care & Health Systems Research Program at ICES.
