Google launches new line-list database management platform for COVID-19

Tech giant Google has stated that it will release Global.health, a database management platform that will contain information about almost 10 million COVID-19 cases from over 100 countries. Google has collaborated with various research institutes and hospitals, such as Boston Children's Hospital and the University of Oxford. Google will be using its database management platform to collect the most crucial patient data.

The data includes age range, gender, occupation, ethnicity, location, symptoms, travel history, preexisting conditions, and outcome, whenever available. It is said that the database will be beneficial for policymakers tasked with creating policies for lockdowns, mask-wearing, and social distancing. It is said that this will be the first-ever global line-list database for infectious disease. Google added that the data could be maintained in a Google spreadsheet.

This new database platform offered by Google will help research institutes and hospitals a better context that becomes very important when trying to figure out transmission patterns or the effectiveness of the government's policies in that particular country. The data on the Global.health platform is accessible to anybody with an e-mail address. This new platform will be helpful not only in battling COVID-19 but in accelerating responses to future pandemics.