ThinkTWENTY20

We all know that Covid-19 isn’t going to go away until after a vaccine is developed. Medical researchers are working around the world to develop such a vaccine and other researchers are working hard to identify causes, contamination pathways, vulnerabilities of segments of the population, and a variety of other aspects of this unprecedented and catastrophic pandemic.

During the time it takes to do the research and identify and implement the solutions, people are getting sick and dying. Time is critical.

Research requires good data and there are data available. However, much of it is produced in PDF file and on websites using HTML. Good for humans to read it but not good for machines to use it. Transcription of data from a source to the analytical tools takes valuable time. IF the source data were presented in a form that could be readily used by the analytical tools, lives could be saved.

“XBRL International reports that Reportix co-founder and CEO Dennis Münkle has asked why — given all of the statistics, dashboards, and other reports about the current pandemic —it is still difficult to access, analyze, and reuse the raw data in many, if not most, of these reports.

Reportix took the available data and republished it using Inline XBRL along with visualizations of the data.” (https://blogs.cfainstitute.org/marketintegrity/2020/04/23/like-financial-reporting-covid-19-needs-structured-data/)

More of this needs to be done. Inline XBRL is used for financial reporting with strong results for usability of the data. The same could be true of Covid-19 related data.