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Home / The International Journal of Tuberculosis and Lung Disease, Volume 25, Number 11

Open Access Advancing TB research using digitized programmatic data

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Authors: Taaffe, J. 1 ; Croda, J. 2 ; Moultrie, H. 3 ; Silva, D. S. 4 ; Rosenthal, A. 1 ; Farhat, M. 5 ; 

Source: The International Journal of Tuberculosis and Lung Disease, Volume 25, Number 11, 1 November 2021, pp. 890-895(6)

Publisher: International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5588/ijtld.21.0325

This article is Open Access under the terms of the Creative Commons CC BY licence.

The use of real-world data from national TB care programs has great potential to answer key research questions in TB control and is now opportune due to increasing digital data collection and storage. We summarize an expert stakeholder workshop conducted on this topic in October 2019, with perspectives from academics, national TB program officers, and data managers. We discuss challenges and opportunities in the use of TB programmatic data for research and describe digital data availability in two large, high TB burden countries, Brazil and South Africa. From this, we posit that with a standardized data collection set, improved data management, and greater collaboration, more TB programmatic data can be used for research with measurable public health impact.

Keywords: TB programs; data sharing; digital health

Document Type: Review Article

Affiliations: 1: Office of Cyber Infrastructure and Computational Biology, Department of Health and Human Services, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, USA 2: Federal University of Mato Grosso do Sul, Campo Grande, MS, Brazil, Department of Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases, Yale University School of Public Health, New Haven, NJ, USA, Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, Campo Grande, MS, Brazil 3: National Institute for Communicable Diseases, Division of the National Health Laboratory Service, Johannesburg, South Africa 4: Sydney Health Ethics, University of Sydney School of Public Health, Sydney, NSW, Australia 5: Department of Biomedical Informatics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, USA

Publication date: 01 November 2021

More about this publication?

  • The International Journal of Tuberculosis and Lung Disease (IJTLD) is for clinical research and epidemiological studies on lung health, including articles on TB, TB-HIV and respiratory diseases such as COVID-19, asthma, COPD, child lung health and the hazards of tobacco and air pollution. Individuals and institutes can subscribe to the IJTLD online or in print – simply email us at [email protected] for details.

    The IJTLD is dedicated to understanding lung disease and to the dissemination of knowledge leading to better lung health. To allow us to share scientific research as rapidly as possible, the IJTLD is fast-tracking the publication of certain articles as preprints prior to their publication. Read fast-track articles.

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