The importance of digitalisation and data science for HIS strengthening

Abstract The COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019) pandemic has underscored the critical need for all countries to strengthen their health data and information systems and ensure the routes the data travel, from submission to use, are unobstructed. Timely, credible, reliable, and actionable data are key to ensuring that political decisions are data driven and facilitate understanding, monitoring, and forecasting. To ensure that critical decisions related to the wider health and socioeconomic effects of this pandemic are data driven, each country needs to develop or enhance a national data governance plan that includes a clear coordination mechanism, well-defined and documented data processes (manual or electronic), the exchange of data, and a data culture to empower users. In addition, countries should now more than ever invest and enhance their data and health information systems to ensure that all decisions are data driven and that they are prepared for what is next. Furthermore, strong enabling environments and advanced and digitized health information systems are vital to controlling epidemics. Sustainable finance and government support are required for the continued implementation and enhancement of HIS. It is important to promote digital solutions beyond the COVID-19 pandemic. Now is the time to discuss potential solutions to obtain timely, accurate, and reliable health information and steer policy-making while protecting privacy rights and meeting the highest ethical standards.

When the SDGs were adopted in 2015, it was already clear that major issues regarding data availability would need to be tackled to enable comprehensive and policy-relevant monitoring and reporting. The SDG Report 2019 found that most MS were still not regularly collecting data for more than half of the global indicators. The measurement framework (MF) of the EPW builds on the SDGs. Also here, important data gaps for the included health-related SDG indicators exist. These gaps relate, e.g., to coverage of treatment for substance use disorders and the proportion of women with satisfied family planning needs. In addition, the MF exposed data gaps for several other areas that are highly relevant for the WHO European Region, such as health inequalities, intersectoral action for health, ageing populations and mental health. To help overcome these gaps, the EPW MF includes a development list. This list contains 20 indicator areas for which either no well-defined measures have yet been included in Region-wide international data collections or where data are available only for a limited number of MS. It will serve as a priority list for developmental work on indicators in the European Region in the coming years. Data gaps as described above are not stand-alone problems but are linked to wider issues with the functioning of HISs. In the European Region, the main HIS challenges relate to limited resources and capacity; insufficient coordination and collaboration, leading to fragmentation and problems with interoperability; lack of central governance; and limited use of health information for decision-making. In this presentation, we will give an overview of the main gaps in data and HISs in the European Region and explain the roadmap for the implementation of the EPW MF, which will be an important tool to achieve sustainable improvement of data availability and quality for key indicators. Tools to improve HIS performance overall will be addressed in the next presentation.
Abstract citation ID: ckac129.133 Health information system (HIS) assessments as the starting point for HIS strengthening

Marieke Verschuuren
David Ortiz 1 1 Data and Digital Health Unit, WHO Regional Office for Europe, Copenhagen, Denmark Contact: info@mariekeverschuuren.nl One of main the HIS strengthening tools applied by WHO-Euro is the 'Support tool to assess health information systems and develop and strengthen health information strategies', which was first published in 2015 and updated in 2021. The support tool comprises two main parts: it provides guidance firstly for performing an overall assessment of the full HIS, and secondly, for the subsequent development of an HIS strategy. The common mode of application of this tool is an external HIS assessment by a WHO team and a subsequent country-led process of HIS strategy development. So far, experience in the field has been gained mainly with the assessment part of the tool, which has been applied in 15 MS. The assessment process starts with a preparatory desk review, followed by a country visit during which semi-structured interviews are held with key HIS stakeholders. The guidance for the interviews consists of a core module and several add-on modules. The aim of the core module is to provide an overview of the functioning of the entire national HIS, while the add-on modules shed more light on specific parts or functions of the HIS, such as noncommunicable diseases monitoring, human resources for health or health data governance. The core module forms the basis of the HIS assessments, and one or several add-on modules can be added to it, according to the needs of the assessed country. The country visit is finalised with a multi-stakeholder debriefing. After the visit, a report is written with a summary of the situation in the country including an HIS maturity score, an analysis of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT), and recommendations for improvement for the short, medium, and long term. In this presentation, we will explain the methodology of the assessment tool, and reflect on its added value as well as challenges encountered when applying it in practice. The COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019) pandemic has underscored the critical need for all countries to strengthen their health data and information systems and ensure the routes the data travel, from submission to use, are unobstructed. Timely, credible, reliable, and actionable data are key to ensuring that political decisions are data driven and facilitate understanding, monitoring, and forecasting. To ensure that critical decisions related to the wider health and socioeconomic effects of this pandemic are data driven, each country needs to develop or enhance a national data governance plan that includes a clear coordination mechanism, well-defined and documented data processes (manual or electronic), the exchange of data, and a data culture to empower users. In addition, countries should now more than ever invest and enhance their data and health information 15th European Public Health Conference 2022 systems to ensure that all decisions are data driven and that they are prepared for what is next. Furthermore, strong enabling environments and advanced and digitized health information systems are vital to controlling epidemics. Sustainable finance and government support are required for the continued implementation and enhancement of HIS. It is important to promote digital solutions beyond the COVID-19 pandemic. Now is the time to discuss potential solutions to obtain timely, accurate, and reliable health information and steer policy-making while protecting privacy rights and meeting the highest ethical standards.

3.D. Workshop: An urgent need to fully understand Long Covid-19 and its sequela
Abstract citation ID: ckac129.135

Introduction:
Covid-19 has been a pandemic for the past two years. From early on, it became obvious that some of the individuals surviving the infection continued to experience symptoms beyond the acute phase of the infection or else developed symptoms after the acute infection. Multiple terminologies describing this phenomenon started to appear with 'Long Covid' being a popular nomenclature. It soon became evident that Long Covid can affect almost all the body's systems with a plethora of associated symptoms, while new symptoms keep on emerging across time. These persistent symptoms are noted to act differently among different individuals, irrelevant whether they were previously healthy or previously suffering from any chronic disease/s. Indeed, while some experienced persistent symptoms for a couple of weeks, some had persistent symptoms for months. The variations in the severity of symptoms are another feature that became evident among Long Covid sufferers. The year 2021 saw the approval of different Covid-19 vaccines and the initiation of vaccination rollouts across Europe. As the vaccine population coverage progressed, it was anticipated that the lower viral infectivity rate will also decrease the occurrence of Long Covid-19 among the vaccinated as compared to the unvaccinated. Yet breakthrough Covid-19 infections still occurred along with the development of Long Covid-19 among vaccinated, especially as new variants emerged and immunity waned. Long Covid-19 is still a relatively new condition with unspecified pathophysiology and unknown long-term disability trajectory. Therefore, it is imperative that this condition is put into the spotlight to comprehend this pandora's box while trying to prevent its occurrence and the associated sequela. Aim: Considering the fluidly of this condition with speculations that Long Covid might be the new chronic disease of this decade, this workshop is set to provide a multidisciplinary platform for emerging evidence on Long Covid originating from across Europe. In fact, the presentations in this workshop will tackle various aspects pertaining to Long Covid. The first presentation will provide evidence on the different risk factors and symptoms of Long Covid. The second presentation will discuss the association of multimorbidity and socio-economic factors as risk factors of Long-Covid. The third presentation will bring forward the perspectives of those suffering from the condition and the need for an integration of health care targeting both Long Covid and chronic diseases. While the fourth presentation will discuss the burden of Long-Covid symptoms and its impact on the quality of life. Finally, the bidirectional relationship between Long Covid-19 and NCDs along with the required public health action will be discussed. This will be followed by a discussion between the presenters and the audience.

Key messages:
Long Covid-19 is a common occurrence among healthy and chronic diseases population alike with a plethora of contributing risk factors. An integrated healthcare plan is required to decrease the impact of Long Covid-19 on the population while simultaneously managing other underlying conditions and diseases.

Background:
Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, most research has focused on the pathophysiology and management of the acute symptoms of COVID-19, yet some people tend to experience symptoms beyond the acute phase of infection, that is, Post COVID-19 condition (PCC). However, evidence on the prevalence of PCC, its symptoms, and mechanisms are still scarce. This study aimed to assess the distribution, patterns of symptoms, and associated factors of PCC in adult with confirmed COVID-19 infection in Belgium.

Methods:
This is a longitudinal cohort study of Belgian adult population with recent COVID-19 infection confirmed via a molecular test and systematically recruited via national tracing call centers. A total of 5181 people were followed-up using online questionnaires at the time of their infection and 3 months later (from April 2021 to February 2022). Their physical, social and mental health was evaluated as well as their acute COVID-19 symptoms and persistent PCC symptoms. These different variables were self-reported.

Conclusions:
With the growing number of people infected with COVID-19, PCC is becoming an important public health issue. To allow