Call to Action-Matthieu Rolland- London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and R Consortium
Title: The RECON COVID-19 challenge
Title: The RECON COVID-19 challenge
Abstract:
Abstract:
The R Epidemics Consortium (RECON) is an international not-for-profit, non-governmental organisation gathering experts in data science, modelling methodology, public health, and software development to create the next generation of analytics tools for informing the response to disease outbreaks, health emergencies and humanitarian crises, using the R software. These tools have proved their usefulness for designing outbreak analytics pipelines in response to various infectious disease outbreaks such as the Ebola outbreaks in West Africa (2014-2016) and Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (2018-2020), and are currently used by various public health institutions and academic modelling groups in the COVID-19 response. So far, development of these tools has been driven by a limited number of experts in both R and field epidemiology but has lacked larger feedback from the field, and has not fully benefited from contributions of the R community.
The R Epidemics Consortium (RECON) is an international not-for-profit, non-governmental organisation gathering experts in data science, modelling methodology, public health, and software development to create the next generation of analytics tools for informing the response to disease outbreaks, health emergencies and humanitarian crises, using the R software. These tools have proved their usefulness for designing outbreak analytics pipelines in response to various infectious disease outbreaks such as the Ebola outbreaks in West Africa (2014-2016) and Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (2018-2020), and are currently used by various public health institutions and academic modelling groups in the COVID-19 response. So far, development of these tools has been driven by a limited number of experts in both R and field epidemiology but has lacked larger feedback from the field, and has not fully benefited from contributions of the R community.
The RECON COVID-19 challenge, a project financed by the R consortium, aims to bring together the infectious disease modelling, field epidemiology and R communities to improve analytical resources for the COVID-19 response via a dedicated web platform which will be used to centralise, curate and update R development tasks relevant to this health emergency. Tasks will include requests for new functions, for code review, templates of data analyses. This platform, a user-friendly front-end to RECON’s github issues page inspired by the openstreetmap.org task manager, will allow groups involved in the response to COVID-19 to submit outstanding tasks and potential R contributors to quickly identify development needs while ensuring that these developments follow the highest scientific and technical standards. The platform is currently under active development. A first version should go live in September followed by a second version in October implementing feedback from the first version. By making best use of all the functionalities provided by the github issues, we aim for the platform to serve as a forum for exchanging expertise. For the project to be successful, it is critical we initiate an active community of users and developers. The two major axes we have identified in order to achieve this goal are to focus on the platform’s ergonomy, encouraging field agents to easily submit tasks and to effectively reach the R community through efficient communication. While this project is aimed at leveraging R tools for helping to respond to COVID-19, we expect that it will lead to long-lasting developments of partnerships between the R and epidemiological communities, and that the resources developed will become key assets for supporting outbreak responses well beyond this pandemic.
The RECON COVID-19 challenge, a project financed by the R consortium, aims to bring together the infectious disease modelling, field epidemiology and R communities to improve analytical resources for the COVID-19 response via a dedicated web platform which will be used to centralise, curate and update R development tasks relevant to this health emergency. Tasks will include requests for new functions, for code review, templates of data analyses. This platform, a user-friendly front-end to RECON’s github issues page inspired by the openstreetmap.org task manager, will allow groups involved in the response to COVID-19 to submit outstanding tasks and potential R contributors to quickly identify development needs while ensuring that these developments follow the highest scientific and technical standards. The platform is currently under active development. A first version should go live in September followed by a second version in October implementing feedback from the first version. By making best use of all the functionalities provided by the github issues, we aim for the platform to serve as a forum for exchanging expertise. For the project to be successful, it is critical we initiate an active community of users and developers. The two major axes we have identified in order to achieve this goal are to focus on the platform’s ergonomy, encouraging field agents to easily submit tasks and to effectively reach the R community through efficient communication. While this project is aimed at leveraging R tools for helping to respond to COVID-19, we expect that it will lead to long-lasting developments of partnerships between the R and epidemiological communities, and that the resources developed will become key assets for supporting outbreak responses well beyond this pandemic.