IEEE Computational Intelligence Magazine - November 2020 - 61

results in areas close to the disease (e.g. diabetes and old age),
to the outcomes of related restriction measures (e.g. mental
health and childhood obesity), and that can be refocused with
low effort (e.g. child care to elderly care). The potential of (i)
specific public health campaigns using social media; and (ii)
worldwide news monitoring with a measure of impact in
Facebook, can further help in understanding the spread of the
disease and misinformation around it. In turn this will contribute to improvements in the public health campaigns that
are an essential component for the success of disease control.
Finally, the integration and utilization of open datasets, and
the use of MEDLINE, in particular, greatly contribute to the
understanding of the disease itself, when studying it side-byside with the local data. A further ambition is to analyze and
study how individuals' biological and psycho-emotional status
with the actual data performs using adapted mental health
and childhood obesity research questions for the COVID-19
pandemic. Results could influence the current pandemic
response, alongside the development of health policy recommendations and preventive actions needed for prevention/
control of future outbreaks or pandemics. The ethics and governance frameworks used in MIDAS, whilst operationally
limited to the project and the HBS In Northern Ireland
(with model development in the Basque region, and a similar
model adopted within Finland), clearly articulate the demand
and need for a system of oversight and review. Therefore,
what is needed now is the adoption of the described model at
scale, adequately resourced and built upon a funded and
meaningful engagement piece. There will also need to be a
shift to a position in which HBS becomes the Trusted system
for review.
The MIDAS Open Source Foundation (OSF) will directly
facilitate the long-term sustainability and growth of the
MIDAS Platform and will provide an opportunity for health
authorities, as well as regional, national and pan-European governments to embrace the platform to address strategic health
policy development such as for COVID-19 or any future pandemic/global health crisis.
Acknowledgment

This project was funded by the European Union research fund
'Big Data Supporting Public Health Policies,' under GA No.
727721.
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https://www.elastic.co/ https://www.kaggle.com/allen-institute-for-ai/CORD-19-research-challenge https://www.kaggle.com/allen-institute-for-ai/CORD-19-research-challenge http://www.touchendocrinology.com/insight/covid-19-infection-in-people-with-diabetes/ http://www.touchendocrinology.com/insight/covid-19-infection-in-people-with-diabetes/ https://connect.medrxiv.org/relate/content/181 http://www.midasproject.eu http://www.midasproject.eu https://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/medline.html https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov https://coronavirus.ravenpack.com/ https://coronavirus.ravenpack.com/ https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/apr/06/lady-gaga-billie-eilish-and-paul-mccartney-to-play-coronavirus-benefit https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/apr/06/lady-gaga-billie-eilish-and-paul-mccartney-to-play-coronavirus-benefit https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/coronavirus-testing-figures-uk-target-criticism-hancock-a9495621.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/coronavirus-testing-figures-uk-target-criticism-hancock-a9495621.html https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/7/21211716/one http://coronaviruswatch.ircai.org/ https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019 https://www.who.int/dg/speeches/detail/who-director-general-s-opening-remarks-at-the-media-briefing-on-covid-19—11-march-2020 https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019 https://www.who.int/dg/speeches/detail/who-director-general-s-opening-remarks-at-the-media-briefing-on-covid-19—11-march-2020 https://www.who.int/dg/speeches/detail/who-director-general-s-opening-remarks-at-the-media-briefing-on-covid-19—11-march-2020 https://www.who.int/classifications/icd/covid19/en/ https://www.zenodo.org/communities/covid-19/

IEEE Computational Intelligence Magazine - November 2020

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